


you tentacle my fancy

by divinerenjun



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Consentacles, Explicit Sexual Content, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Hand Jobs, M/M, Oppa Kink, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Tentacle Sex, Tentacles, belly bulge, its yumark what did u expect, mark is horny for 20k+ thats it thats the fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:47:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 27,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27308671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/divinerenjun/pseuds/divinerenjun
Summary: Yuta’s hot. That part is nothing new.Yuta has tentacles. This part isn’t new either.The whole ‘hot boy is willing to fuck his friends with said tentacles’ thingisnew, though. Mark’s not quite sure whether he’s happy about the possibilities this newly-gleaned information is presenting him.What heissure of is that he’s getting hard thinking about it. Yuta’s tentacles are a peachy orange and Mark thinks that maybe they would look good wrapped around his cock.
Relationships: Mark Lee/Nakamoto Yuta
Comments: 56
Kudos: 539





	1. close encounters

**Author's Note:**

> whew. here goes nothing folks. 
> 
> if youre here just for the porn skip to the 2nd half of this chapter or chapter 2 i wont judge i promise <3 if youre here for all of it, all the stupid cute feelings development and sexual tension and buildup, then i applaud you. this fic has been really really fun to write and i hope you all enjoy in whatever capacity you like!!!
> 
> a special, special thanks to [lex](https://archiveofourown.org/users/boyfrendery/pseuds/boyfrendery) for betaing ❤️ i love you and your emotions.

It starts with an itch.

Something in the back of Mark's mind that tickles his skull and whispers, in a silky voice that sounds a bit too much like Ten's for Mark to be comfortable, " _Don't you wanna know what they feel like?"_ every time he so much as glances in Yuta's direction.

Eventually, it grows into a full-blown hunger: a shoot of green that presses against its seed until it makes a split and can worm its way into fresh air, twining around Mark's brain in desperate search of sunlight and _screaming_ the truth, that he _does_ want to know what they feel like.

He's seen them before. Walked in on Yuta lounging in his room with them just hanging out, _dangling_ them all over his bean bag while he scrolled through his phone like their orange and glistening existence was _normal._

He hasn’t even been in Yuta’s room since then. The image of slender, shiny tendrils has haunted his every waking moment, though: tantalizing in their otherworldliness, in their strange disconnect from Mark’s black-and-white concept of reality. 

They met through Mark’s roommate ad on Craigslist. When a potential owner of his twinning key put ‘ _btw i have tentacles’_ in the extra information section, Mark had made the _reasonable_ assumption that this guy had an eccentric but enticing sense of humor. When he’d received literally zero other applications, he’d made the _next_ reasonable assumption that sharing rent with half-funny tentacle-boy was a more promising prospect than sharing rent with no one but the wasps building a tight paper nest in the eaves outside the balcony door. 

Meeting Yuta felt like meeting an older brother—or, something along similar lines, Mark thinks, wrinkling his nose at the implications. Like something clicking into place, the universe letting out a breath of relief to the tune of ‘ _yes. This is where you belong.’_ right in his ear. It’s been easy navigating the geography of this friendship: taking care of each other, taking care of a shared living space. Tension is an incomprehensible concept: domestic squabbles are usually as easily solved as “Put the clean dishes away _before_ the sink fills up with dirties, you fucking idiot,” or “I’ve got a paper due in four hours and if you make a _single_ noise I’m kicking you out and stealing your key.”

Mark thinks that maybe, just maybe, mentioning that he wants to touch Yuta’s tentacles—like, _really_ touch them—might add a hint of tension to the apartment’s atmosphere.

♦♦♦

“You’re being dumb,” Ten tells him, carving a sharp smile into the realistic Stay Puft Marshmallow Man coming to life on his pumpkin. 

“Am not,” Mark retorts. His knife slips, nearly slicing right through the meat of his palm, and he curses whoever decided that pumpkins, with their tough flesh and slippery curves, were the best choice for Halloween decorations. He’s gone with the good old triangle-eyed, triangle-nosed jack-o-lantern. “I’m just being reasonable. You’ve seen them, right?” 

“Yes, Mark, I have.” While Ten speaks, Mark tilts his pumpkin back on his lap, narrowing his eyes and surveying his handiwork. The left eye is half the size of the right, and he begins to remedy his asymmetry. “But that’s not the point. The point is, you guys are close. He won’t judge you. He’s not too concerned about people touching them, honestly, I was surprised—”

“Wait.” Mark looks up sharply. Ten is etching fine lines, orange giving way to the tip of his blade with ease. “Have _you_ touched them _?_ ”

Ten grins, and looks up to meet Mark’s gaze. A breeze blows across the lawn, dead leaves skittering down the street, scratching out a tune that Mark can’t quite resonate with. It leaves something to be desired, some longing for a deeper, more satisfying sound. 

The look in Ten’s eyes nearly makes up what the music of the leaves lacks. Mark looks back down at his pumpkin after a moment, unable to hold eye contact, and starts in on a crooked smile.

“Yeah, I have. It totally wasn’t a big deal, ‘cause I’m not a little pussy like you.” Mark rolls his eyes. His jack-o-lantern sympathises. 

“Okay. Well.” Silence for a minute or two as Mark concentrates on cutting more of the pumpkin than his own fingers, then: “Ten?”

“Hmm?”

“What do they feel like?”

Ten doesn’t respond, and Mark glances over to see him putting the final details into the marshmallow man’s shoes— _shoes._ Mark looks at his own jagged edges and sighs, cuts a little snaggletooth in the pumpkin’s grin.

“Finished.” Ten sits back, and his voice is pure satisfaction. “What do they feel like?” He hums, pondering. 

Mark’s knife stutters along a particularly tough spot of flesh, and he shivers in another cool breath of wind. Again, the leaves dance towards an unknown destination.

“Do you mean when I was touching them or when they were inside me?”

In one swift motion, Mark’s smile turns to a frown, a large chunk of his pumpkin falling off the table and bouncing across the cobblestones of Ten’s front patio. He nearly drops his knife blade-first into his thigh as he looks up at Ten in shock. 

“What?” Ten reeks of falsified innocence. His pointed grin betrays him even more than his words. 

It’s all Mark can do to stare, mouth agape, and will against whatever images Ten’s words conjure up along the edges of his now-fuzzy mind: pink, slick, sweat, _hunger_. He swallows, and feels his eyes glaze over, sheer will no match for the strength of his imagination. 

Part of him feels like he’s going to be sick. A much larger, much louder part of him feels like it very much wants to be witnessing what he’s picturing firsthand.

Ten leans across the table, taking in the ruined mouth on Mark’s pumpkin, and purses his lips. “Shame. You can always go the classically gross route: make it throw up its own guts.”

Mark blanches, and Ten laughs. 

His jack-o-lantern’s forlorn expression mocks him.

♦♦♦

Halloween is there before Mark knows it. He spends the whole day in a busy daze, finishing up a project for his physics class before going with Yuta to help set up for Ten and Johnny’s annual ‘Autumnal Fest.’ Shitty name for a party that’s never as shitty as Mark expects. 

This year is no exception, even though Mark, Yuta, and just five of their other friends make up the entire guestlist. The curse of COVID. They get the whole patio looking spooky and fun, pumpkins lining the walkway, candles flickering on every table, plastic bats hanging from the balcony, and fake spiderwebs strung up between the bushes.

Lucas and Hendery arrive, dressed as Peach and Mario respectively. They went all out, as everyone knew they would, and when Haechan and Jaehyun show up dressed as a half-assed toothbrush and toothpaste—recognizable only due to the sign reading ‘COLGATE’ taped onto Haechan’s white shirt and a corresponding label on Jaehyun’s reading ‘tOOthbrush’ with dots in the middle of each ‘O’ like boobies—they get hell. 

Jongin shows up last, dressed as a firefighter in stupid red skintight leather pants and top. “Yo, what are you? A fucking stripper?” Johnny jokes as he walks up the path and has to stop to adjust the crotch of the pants. 

Jongin gives him a snide look before complimenting Ten’s getup as the girl from The Ring. “Shitty movie, but great costume, dude.”

They talk and drink the night away, eating most of the Halloween candy Johnny bought for trick-or-treaters. They only get one little kid brave enough to walk up and show off her masked costume, and Johnny slips on a mask and gloves and tosses her two whole handfuls of Kit-Kats. The rest of the evening passes uninterrupted, just friends catching up. Their laughter echoes off the front of the house and bounces into the woods across the road, creating a cacophony that harmonizes well with _Love Potion No. 9_ as it curls out of Haechan’s Bluetooth speaker.

Eventually the guests bid their goodnights, and Ten somehow talks his way out of clean-up for his _own_ party. Johnny trails him inside—shrugging his shoulders, throwing up a peace sign, and telling Yuta and Mark to “Enjoy the rest of their night!” when Yuta asks him where the fuck he thinks he’s going. 

Mark’s been hard-pressed to enjoy the conversation and company tonight to the fullest extent. His mind just can’t let go of Ten’s words—of the idea that Yuta _fucks_ people with those things.

It’s not like Mark is some sort of nervous virgin. He’s, to put it bluntly, a champion at taking cock, giving cock, sucking cock, eating pussy, you name it. 

There is, however, a difference between a _normal_ human with _normal_ human genitalia (or any variation thereof) and this distinctly _un-_ normal human with distinctly _un-_ human appendages currently brushing shoulders with him as they blow out the candles lining Ten’s patio. It’s all Mark can do not to bolt into the heavy shadows every time Yuta’s shoulder bumps his own. 

Yuta’s costume for the night is simple: brown muscle tee, black pants tight enough to give Jongin’s a run for their money, and a little green vest he’d discarded after the third beer. It’s a character from Fullmetal Alchemist, the one anime that he hasn’t forced Mark to watch with him yet, and Yuta _swears_ the guy is spooky in the show. 

Mark muses at the irony. Yuta looks so… _normal:_ so ‘average young-adult dude dressing up for Halloween in some costume that he can argue is supposed to be scary even though it really just makes him look hot.’ The muscle tee gapes every time Yuta leans forward, exposing even more of his ribcage and, when Mark is lucky, a little nip slip. The contrast between this _normal_ facade and the literal tentacles hidden somewhere in that shirt (under Yuta’s skin, _wherever_ ) is gonna send Mark into orbit if he’s not careful—if he doesn’t stop thinking about the possibility, the well-disguised danger, the hidden spook that Yuta could probably have pulled off as some high-tech costume but _chose_ to keep tucked away.

Even when it’s just them around the apartment, or just them with Ten or Hendery, Yuta hides them away. To an extent, Mark is grateful. He can’t imagine it could be _comfortable_ keeping them confined, but he really doesn’t think his sanity could take that kind of blow: Yuta strolling around, standing at the fridge, doing homework on the couch, all with his secret little orange friends keeping him company, floating around him, poking, prodding, doing whatever it is they do. 

Let alone him having to be _shirtless_ the whole time. 

Again, Mark’s no virgin, but Yuta was literally sculpted in the manner of a Greek God, tentacles aside (or maybe included. He doesn’t know _that_ much about Greek mythology.).

Now, though, with the chilly October air turning Mark’s hands pink as the hour creeps later and later, Mark can’t help wanting a peek. He wants Yuta to take off his shirt, show off his extraterrestrial biology: a trick and a treat all at once, scary and sexy in one package. 

_What have you got to lose?_

His rationality kicks in automatically: _a roommate, a best friend, eye candy, your sanity—_ until his horny brain interrupts and manages to wrestle for control of his mouth. 

“Yuta,” he starts, gathering up another armful of empty beer cans and paper napkins. “You know, we could, like, maybe use an extra arm or two. If you know what I mean.”

Yuta pauses, hovering with a damp cloth in his hand above the patio table, and looks over at Mark. “You mean, like, going to ask Ten to help? Or…”

“Nah, man.” Mark swallows, and walks over to drop the cans in Ten’s recycling bin. They tinkle against the small mountain of recyclables building inside. “Your, uh. You know,” he gestures vaguely in Yuta’s direction, letting out an awkward laugh. "Only if you want, I mean. I just think they could probably help clean-up go a lot faster, y’know?” He realizes he’s rambling and stops, face warm as he turns back to look at his roommate.

Yuta’s wiping the table down diligently, focusing on a particularly sticky spot, and seems not to have heard Mark’s words. 

Regret, guilt, embarrassment, all wash over Mark in an insurmountable wave, chilling him from head to toe. They clean in silence for a few minutes, Mark’s ears tinged firetruck red.

He’s considering the merits of running away—just fucking booking it for the hills, making a new identity and forgetting all about sparkly tentacles and how warm Yuta’s skin is—when Yuta speaks.

“Not here, Mark.”

And that’s it. That’s all he gets: an open-ended declination. No _“you’re so fucking weird, bye,”_ or _“sure Mark, and while you’re at it why don’t you just get on your knees for me in the middle of Ten’s porch, yeah?”_ Just something in the middle. 

A confusing blend of rejection-sadness and excitement trickles down Mark’s spine. The silence this time is heavy, weighed down by Mark’s brain spinning at the speed of light to try and make sense of Yuta’s words. _‘Not here.’ So, like,_ there? _Somewhere else? Or not at all, ever?_

He turns Yuta’s words over in his mind, tipsy brain slurring the cadence as it repeats like a broken record: _Not here. Mark, not here. Here not. Not Mark, not here. Here, Mark. What. No. What?_

They finish cleaning in the tense, silent atmosphere. Yuta opens the front door and shouts a final goodbye in the direction of Ten and Johnny’s bedrooms, then they walk the few blocks back to their apartment complex. Yuta comments on some Halloween decorations and points out the few late-night stragglers in wacky costumes in amusion, as if he and Mark aren’t in the exact same situation. Mark leans against Yuta’s side for support as he laughs at someone parading around in a literal vagina costume and definitely doesn’t linger there longer than necessary (Yuta is _warm_ and the night is cold and Mark’s Spiderman onesie is not built from very durable material.). 

He unzips it down to his waist as soon as they step through the door, sighing. Yuta gives him an amused look and makes straight for the kitchen.

“Yo, you hungry?” He opens the fridge. Mark just stares at him, stomach full of chips and candy corn. He marvels at Yuta’s metabolism and shakes his head.

“Nah, I’m gonna go shower. Feel gross,” he mutters. Yuta nods, and Mark slips away to the bathroom. 

The hot steam clears his sinuses from the tickle of autumn allergies and gives him time to think as the grime accumulated under that stupid onesie suds down the drain. 

Yuta’s hot. That part is nothing new. Mark isn’t blind, so he’s been very aware of this fact since their first meeting. 

Yuta has tentacles. This part isn’t new either. It took the Beanbag Incident for Mark to understand that Yuta and Johnny weren’t just playing some dumb practical joke on him whenever they’d talked about them before, but he’s since accepted the truth.

The whole ‘hot boy is willing to fuck his friends with said tentacles’ thing _is_ new, though. Mark’s not quite sure whether he’s happy about the possibilities this newly-gleaned information is presenting him.

What he _is_ sure of is that he’s getting hard thinking about it. Yuta’s tentacles are a peachy orange and Mark thinks that maybe they would look good wrapped around his cock. 

The blue-gray shower tiles blur together in Mark’s vision, thick rivulets of warm water trickling down the lines of grout in between.

It’s not _bad,_ or anything, what he wants to do. It’s not like he’s just gonna come out and say he wants Yuta to fuck him— _that_ would probably qualify as bad, Mark thinks. He’ll just say he wants to… touch, or something. Reasonable. 

He shivers despite the tepid water. Mark’s touched stingrays at the aquarium, played with worms in the dirt during his childhood, given handjobs galore. He imagines Yuta’s tentacles will feel like some strange combination of the three.

“It’s late,” Mark confesses to the shower tiles. “I should just go to bed,” he says as he steps out onto the bathmat. “And _not_ think about Yuta’s…” he trails off as he dries his hair and looks up at himself in the mirror. The bathroom fan whirrs high above him, and his reflected face stares back at him in disdain, hopelessness, exasperation.

Mark sighs. “Yeah, I know. I’m not tired either.” 

He wraps the towel around his waist, ignores the semi he’s sporting, and walks back to his room. As he picks out a clean shirt and shorts he hears Yuta get in the shower. Mark spends the next 15 minutes staring at the stucco ceiling and willing away a full erection.

It’s enough time to psyche himself up completely; Mark doesn’t know if that’s a good or bad thing. He gives Yuta five more minutes after the water shuts off to relax in his room, then gets up and pads down the hallway.

Yuta’s door is halfway open, and through the gap Mark can see him lying in bed, phone in hand. He looks softer than normal—that cozy, late night fuzziness in his old college sweatpants and baby pink sweatshirt, hair damp against the pillow, face serene as a clear blue sky—and Mark mentally thanks Lucas once again for fully convincing him Yuta would be a good roommate. 

Mark raps gently on the door three times. “Yuta,” he says, and his voice is soft. He leans against the doorframe like a crutch and wishes forlornly that he had planned some sort of speech to clarify his intentions. 

Yuta looks up at him, tosses his head to get his wet hair out of his eyes, and smiles. 

“'Sup?” Yuta asks, ever-eloquent, and Mark gulps. He nudges the door open all the way and shuffles his feet, caught in the liquidized gaze Yuta’s giving him, like molten lava pooling around his ankles and pinning him in place.

“So, like, this might sound weird.” Mark pauses, tucks his chin and darts his eyes to the side before zeroing back in on Yuta’s face. “But can I, like, touch them?”

Yuta grins, eyes narrowing, understanding in an instant despite Mark’s lack of clarification. “Did Ten put you up to this?”

Mark splutters. “No—well, yes, kind of, but no! I just…” He trails off, feels heat rise to his cheeks and shame curl in his belly. “Nevermind, dude, just. I dunno. Nevermind.” This was a terrible idea. This was a terrible idea and Yuta’s going to move out and Mark will have to find another roommate during a pandemic and if that doesn’t sound like hell then Mark doesn’t know what would. “Sorry,” he finishes, and starts to turn away—

“Mark, what?” Yuta sounds amused, not angry or upset, and Mark side-eyes his expression to see his face matches his voice. He angles his body back towards Yuta’s bed. “You wanna _touch_ them?”

Mark’s face must be cherry-red at this point. “Yeah—I mean, it’s nothing, it’s just—”

“Where did all this come from, though? You totally can, I don’t mind, I’m just confused as to why you’re asking _now_ after we’ve lived together for this long.” Yuta bites at the inside of his bottom lip in a familiar gesture. “I mean, the whole ‘helping with clean-up’ bit was one thing…”

Mark shrugs, and tries to ignore the pounding of his heart. “I don’t know. I guess it’s the Halloween spirit?” he suggests weakly. From the pursed-lip, raised-brow look Yuta shoots him it’s clear he doesn’t believe a word of it. Mark sighs.

“Come in, Mark,” Yuta says, finally putting his phone down and sitting up straight. Mark obeys without a second thought. Yuta’s room is chilly; he has the window open to let in the crisp autumn air, and Mark appreciates the gentle breeze as it cools his flaming cheeks. He closes the door behind him instinctively, and as it clicks into its frame he gulps, subconscious recognizing that he’s effectively just caged himself into the lion’s den.

“Halloween spirit, huh?” Yuta grins.

Mark shrugs again. “I-I don’t know. I figured it was about time I guess.”

“Y’know, it’s not everyday your roommate asks to touch your tentacles, Mark.”

Mark shivers at the bluntness, then flushes an even deeper red. He wonders distantly if Yuta likes it, flustering him like this, then clears his head. Even though _he’s_ horny it doesn’t necessarily mean Yuta is.

“And if Ten had any influence over this—even if it was just a little,” Yuta continues, expression turning pensive, “I doubt this is your average close encounter.” Mark furrows his brow in confusion, but Yuta isn’t done. “I mean, I doubt you’re here just ‘cause you’re curious, right?”

Mark darts his eyes to the side, perplexed. “What do you mean?”

“I _mean,_ ” Yuta tilts his head. “Do you want to touch them or do you want _them_ to touch _you_?”

Mark feels his eyes widen and suddenly feels the strong desire to bolt back down the hall to his room. The warm comfort of his own bed sounds _lovely_ right now—anywhere but here. “Wh—What?” He gulps. Is he _really_ that transparent? Is Yuta _really_ insinuating what Mark thinks he is?

“You watch tentacle porn, don’t you.” It’s not a question. Yuta’s voice is blunt, his eyes knowing.

“I-I wouldn’t say that I _watch_ it,” Mark splutters, defensive, “More that I… like… _have_ _watched_ it.” It’s the truth—sort of. Mark _doesn’t_ have an affinity for that type of thing, but he’s actively searched for his fair share of hentai, and Yuta clearly assumes as much.

Yuta smirks. “Come here.” He pats a spot on the bed before him, and Mark feels drawn, like a puppet on strings. He stumbles a little bit, legs feeling like jelly in the predatory look Yuta’s turning on him all of a sudden, then finds himself cross-legged on the comforter, mirroring Yuta. Their knees knock together.

A sudden gust of wind outside carries the bright, tinkling sound of breaking glass from somewhere down a nearby street and Mark jumps. His nerves are frayed like shiny copper wire. He feels the strange urge to ask Yuta to be his insulation but shakes the thought from his head.

Yuta’s still got that expectant look on his face, waiting for an answer to his question. Mark tries to force down the fear that he thinks is reminiscent of what an eagle’s prey would feel.

“I mean,” he can’t tear his eyes away from Yuta’s sharp-as-broken-glass gaze. “That’s not… I wouldn’t be, like, _opposed_ to that idea, I guess.” Tentacles on his skin. Tentacles on his skin and on his tongue and in his ass, please, right fucking now. A wave of blood roils through his gut and zips down the length of his cock, and Mark closes his eyes against the unexpected surge of arousal. “Them touching me, I mean,” he concludes in a whisper.

When he opens his eyes again, Yuta’s just smiling at him, lips full and pink, and Mark feels the last drop of his sanity drip down the drain.

Yuta reaches back to pull off his shirt, holding eye contact as long as he can. When he drops the shirt somewhere to the side of the bed, they appear.

Glistening, pulsing, semi-translucent. Mark feels his mouth fall open and doesn’t bother to disguise his curiosity as he surveys this alien biology. They don’t have suckers like octopus tentacles—they’re just smooth, shiny peach from base to tip—and Mark nods despite himself, some fiery part of him recognizing that this would definitely make it easier to shove them up his ass.

They almost seem to be glowing—Mark thinks it’s just their shininess catching the light and bouncing it back out. He thinks of blown glass: the Chihuly exhibit he saw in Seattle years ago; how each piece of the particular sculpture was entirely unique in texture, shade, shape, girth, yet together they created a sea, seeming to dance among the garden where they were installed, curving and complementing each other, opaque from the base up then tapering off to turn translucent at the pointy tip.

Then, he thinks of the sun, shooting out spikes of superheated gas, impossible to look at, into the dark depths of space, into the low light of Yuta’s bedroom. The tentacles curl, undulating, as they prod at the still and heavy air. Each one tapers to a blunt point, finite lengths seeming infinite in their out-of-placeness inside this simple Houston apartment. It’s all Mark can do to sit perfectly still and swallow his instinctual fear as one tendril creeps closer, hovering just in front of his chest until he gives a slight nod, eyes fixed on its gentle tip, and Yuta stretches it to poke at his chest.

Chilly. There’s a coldness to it even through Mark’s shirt, contrasting the heat sparking under Mark’s skin, the image of the sun branded in his mind, the humidity building in Yuta’s room despite the occasional cool breeze through the open window. 

“I half—” Mark’s voice comes out gravelly from his nerves and their long silence. He clears his throat. “I half expected it to feel sticky.”

“Nah,” Yuta responds. His own nerves—or excitement, maybe—show in the blush sitting pretty on his haughty cheekbones. Mark wants to kiss the red away—or make Yuta’s entire body flush, he doesn’t quite know. “Not sticky. They can get wet though,” he swallows, “if I, you know, want them to.”

Mark licks his lips, feels the tips of his ears burn, and glances down to watch the tentacle gently stroking across his chest, tracing unintelligible shapes against his skin, and is mesmerized by its simplicity. 

The scientist in him is struggling very hard to stay silent. “How does it work, though?” he finally asks, gulping hard as the fine tip brushes across one of his nipples. “Like, how much control do you have? You said you can, like, make it wet? What else can you do?”

Yuta gives a short little laugh, and the tentacle retracts. Mark misses its cold touch instantly, and barely stops himself from reaching out to grab it and pull it back to him. 

“Lots of things, I guess. When I think about it, I can change the temperature.” Instantly, frigid air begins to roll off the appendages, sending a shiver down Mark’s spine and frosting the wet air between them. 

“Or the color.” The room returns to an average temperature as each tendril begins phasing through the colors of the rainbow: rose-red fading to a muted orange to a subtle yellow and so on; then white to grey to a soulless, void-like black that makes Mark shudder even as he wants to touch, to grip tight to a tentacle and see if it turns liquid between his fingers as they all look like they might when in that end of the color(less) spectrum. Then, they return to Yuta’s favored gentle peach.

“Or the… size?” And this one, _wow._ This one makes Mark shudder for a whole different reason. The tendril previously caressing his bare skin shivers all down its length and then _expands,_ filling out in a wave from a bulb that builds at the base where it connects vaguely to Yuta’s torso all the way along to its point, thickening half an inch in diameter. This repeats, shockwaves of extra girth spilling out from _somewhere_ and rippling down the smooth substance of the tentacle, two more times, until the closest foot of the appendage is approximately three inches in diameter, widening to four where peach is flush to Yuta’s tan skin. 

Mark eyes up the thickened length and practically salivates. He wants that _inside him._ He wants to feel those ripples spread down a tentacle when it’s shoved as deep up his ass as he can fit it, wants to feel one widen and stretch him out from the inside, _“rearrange his guts,”_ as Ten would say. 

“Yuta,” he chokes out. “One more question, I promise, and then we can, like, I dunno, do whatever.” He swallows, half-hoping Yuta takes the hint. “Does it feel… good? To touch them?”

At this, Yuta grins: pointed, feral. 

“It can,” he says, sly as a fox, “if I want.”

And God, Mark wants him to want. Mark wants him to _want_ to shove them in every hole he has, wants him to want Mark choking around them, drooling around them, fucking himself as far down their lengths as he can get. 

A new thought hits him like a freight train, and he gasps. The tentacles floating closest to him retract slightly at the sudden noise, like startled kittens, and Mark breaks his promise to not ask any more questions. “Have you, like… Yuta... Have you ever fucked yourself with them?”

Yuta _laughs._ He full-bellied, throws his head back, _laughs._ Mark just sits there, watches Yuta’s tentacles bounce with the vibrations of his chest until he collects himself and wipes the stray tear from the corner of his eye. 

“Wow,” Yuta chuckles, scratching at his head. “You’re just getting right into it, huh.” He doesn’t sound bothered in the slightest. There’s a hint of fascination in his voice, in his ever-sparkly eyes, in the tilt of his head as he surveys Mark from head to toe before answering his question, as if he finds it difficult to connect the inquiry with the boy sitting before him.

One of the peach tendrils stretches to lay across Mark’s thigh, a gentle weight, a subtly insistent reminder of their existence and the proximity between Mark and Yuta, the reason their knees are brushing, the reason Mark’s heart is pounding like the backbeat of some sultry Arctic Monkeys song. _Do I wanna know?_ He thinks, gulping as he tries to focus on Yuta’s words, closing his eyes as Yuta’s mouth opens. _Do I really wanna know?_

“Yes,” Yuta answers.

And that’s it. That’s all Mark gets. One word and a thousand filthy images, unbidden, flashing behind his eyelids. It’s worse and better than imagining Yuta with Ten: it’s Yuta stretched, languorous, on this very same bed, naked and powerful in his independence as he breaks himself apart, inside out, outside in, writhing in time with the pulsing of his tentacles as they fuck his own ass. 

Mark bites his lip to keep from moaning, but as it is a little gasp jumps from his tongue. He feels sweat bead along his hairline and his fingers twitch in the bedsheets. 

After a moment of concentrated calm breathing, he blinks his eyes open and meets Yuta’s expectant gaze. Yuta’s eyes are wide, earnest, no hint of shame. There’s a tentacle hovering over his shoulder, and Mark thinks that if it had eyes it would be looking at him with that curious gaze well-trained puppies get: gauging his reaction and searching for any hint of permission to jump on him and cover his face in kisses.

Belatedly, he realizes Yuta’s spoken.

“Sorry,” he shakes his head a bit. “What?”

Yuta smiles, and the tip of the tentacle on Mark’s thigh slides along his skin just under the hem of his shorts. He shivers. 

“I said, how does that make you feel, Mark? Knowing I’ve fucked myself with these things?”

 _Knowing any one of them could have been inside me. Knowing it_ can _feel good. Knowing I did it all one wall away from you, asleep, awake, studying, showering, eating,_ fuck. It’s all implied, and Mark feels a bullet of arousal shoot down his spine, blow a little hole in his stomach, make room for the desire for _more more more._

It’s clear Yuta expects a serious answer. No rhetoric in this room. Mark gulps.

“I feel…” The tentacle suddenly turns warm against his skin, and he scrunches up his nose. “I feel…” It traces a path up his thigh, fiddles with the tight leg of his briefs, and suddenly, as if it weren’t all overwhelming already, Mark feels like he can’t breathe. “I feel weird, Yuta, I feel so strange ‘cause I’m turned on but they’re _creepy,_ dude, like, you’re like a fucking octopus or something but I’m _into it?_ Isn’t that weird? No offense.” Mark’s hands fly up to his own face, as if they could feel his sanity seeping out through his skin. “Like,” he pinches both his cheeks, “I’m looking at these _things_ all around us and they’re pretty? But they’re weird. Like, what the hell are you, you know? And why do I like it? Why do I like these _things_ that’s _weird_ ri—”

“Tentacles,” Yuta cuts him off. He doesn’t look the least bothered by Mark’s outburst.

Mark blinks and pulls his hands away from his face. “What?”

Yuta lets out a little huff of laughter, lips quirking up. “Tentacles. They’re called tentacles. If you can’t even say that, I really don’t think I can _touch_ you with them.”

Mark’s heart sinks, skips a beat, then starts jumping rope backwards, uncertain whether this news should come as a relief or a disappointment. His hands drop, useless, to the bed. The tentacle on his thigh retracts, and Mark feels his eyes widen as the array of peach spread out around Yuta starts decreasing in number. Yuta sits still and silent on the bed and bores holes into Mark’s eyes as his extra appendages pack themselves away.

“Wait—” Mark’s heart decides that it’s not happy with this turn of events. “Wait,” he starts again, frowning as the puppy tentacle above Yuta’s shoulder disappears. Yuta doesn’t seem disappointed, his expression carefully blank. “Wait, but, like, I want you to?”

At this, Yuta laughs. He leans back against the headboard and tucks his hands up under his own shirt, a gesture that displays his sincere comfort with this situation. The last of his tentacles has disappeared. “I really don’t believe you, Markie. You’re too scared—”

“Fear can be fun,” Mark retorts sharply, speaking from his own experience living with a sexy monster-human-thing one door down the hall for the past few months. 

Yuta hums, seemingly in agreement, and amends his statement. “Okay, not scared then. More…” he visibly searches for the word, gaze darting all around the room before zeroing back in on Mark with an intensity that Mark, if he weren’t so _sensible_ a person, would almost see as a challenge. “Immature. Yeah,” Yuta smiles. “That’s it.”

Mark huffs, sitting up straighter. “I’m not ‘ _immature,_ ’” he bites back, then swallows as a peach tendril snakes out of nowhere and wraps itself around Yuta’s cock through his sweatpants, outlining its soft length clearly through the gray fabric. Mark winces and feels his face screw up in a confused-turned-on-scared-intimidated-what-the-fuck expression. 

Yuta grins, bright as a nickel, and shrugs. The tentacle disappears. “When you can actually _say_ it—say the word: _‘tentacles’_ —then we can talk again.”

It takes a solid thirty seconds before Mark can pull his eyes away from Yuta’s crotch, shifting all the while as his cock tries to decide whether it’s interested or just plain weirded-out. He finally manages to meet Yuta’s gaze, feeling the flush on his face warm as summer sun. 

“Fine,” Mark says, cheeks warm. “Give me a few days.” It’s almost a plea, softer than he intended, and he watches Yuta’s eyes soften to match.

“Take your time. I want you to feel comfortable.” He smiles. “I’m in no rush.” 

♦♦♦

Yuta doesn’t hide them anymore. 

He slithers into the kitchen every morning with a few of them hovering around him—one in particular likes to hang out above his head, twisted into a curve like a mockery of a halo—and uses them to grab a mug for his breakfast tea, turn the dial on the stove to start heating up the water in the pot, and open the cupboard to pull out a bag of black. Mark, ever the early-riser, sits at their little dining table and tries to keep his eyes in their sockets. 

He doesn’t bother with shirts anymore either. His pecs fucking _glisten_ in the weak morning sun shining between their half-drawn curtains until the pot whistles and he douses his teabag in boiling water and turns those shining muscles in Mark’s direction to let his drink steep. 

“Morning,” he says every day, with an intonation that sounds more like he’s declaring a fact than giving a greeting. 

If Mark isn’t choking on toast at this point, he usually says something super cool and witty, like “Hi,” or “Yeah.” 

Mark is spared after breakfast, when Yuta holes up in his room for a few hours to rattle away at his laptop. Mark spends the time working diligently on his school assignments and _doesn’t_ think about licking up the defined middle line of Yuta’s abs. 

Then, Yuta goes on his daily run—shirt _on._ And then he comes home and takes his shirt back off and lets his tentacles out again and eats a protein bar and checks in on Mark and _then_ he takes a _shower_ and Mark _doesn’t_ wonder whether he has to wash them too, if he lathers them up in soap, rinses them off ‘till they’re slick and shiny again, fucks himself with them under the cold water, clawing for a grip against the wet tiles—

And then Mark gets off, like, three times in a row. 

They conjoin to watch a movie or anime episode every evening, just like normal, and Yuta flicks the lightswitch with one of his tentacles, curls one around the bottom of the popcorn bowl to give it to Mark when he asks, and punches up the volume with another when the TV is too quiet. 

Then they say goodnight, and Mark gets off again, alone in his room, staring up at the ceiling and trying in vain to pretend he isn’t picturing pretty peach wrapped around his cock in place of his hand.

In other words, Mark is absolutely, positively, 100% fucked. 

In other _other_ words, he doesn’t think he’s going to be able to take this weird, casual, torturous limbo they’ve created for themselves for much longer. 

He practices in front of the mirror: “Tentacles,” he says, in every tone and accent he can think of, watching his own face contort with the word. “Tentacles,” he whispers, making himself shiver.

“Octopuses have tentacles. Squids have tentacles. Yuta has tentacles.” He always gets through the first two declarations without so much as a blink then finds himself squinting at the third. 

“Yuta has tentacles,” he tells his laptop, his guitar, his pillow, his cock, and each one of them gets him hard, and each one of them turns into an enemy by the fourth day and the thousandth repetition. 

Every time they meet in the living room Mark gets halfway there, stutters out a “T” before his rationality takes over and he’s saying “Takeout? For dinner, I mean,” or “Ten says hi,” or “Tomorrow is trash day, don’t forget,” and Yuta just smiles and nods. Mark’s grateful that he’s not pushing the issue.

By day six his dick is half-raw and he can say it in the mirror with a straight face. “Tentacles,” he declares with only a hint of hesitation. “Tentacles,” he moans as he fingers himself open. “Tentacles,” he sings, strumming a G-chord and snorting in laughter at his shabby song.

He gives himself one more day, one final vestige of sanity, and can’t keep the grin off his face the whole 24 hours.

“What’s got you so happy, Mark?” Yuta asks, curious as they cross paths midday, headed in separate directions but equally feeling the pull towards one another. 

Mark smiles, and wills himself to keep his secret just a little bit longer. “Oh, nothing!” He says, and then practically skips down the hall to his room, ignoring the confused grin on Yuta’s face in favor of burying his head in his sheets and chanting the words like a prayer: “Yuta has tentacles, Yuta has tentacles, _God,_ Yuta has tentacles.”

In a rare, poorly-timed occurrence, Yuta is gone all the next day—no warning, just a sticky note on the fridge reading ‘ _smoothie in here. u can have some.’_ Mark pulls out the half-full glass, gives it a sniff, and wrinkles his nose at the scent of kale. 

_‘fuck you and your stupid health regimines i am not drinking something with green chunks in it,’_ Mark adds to the post-it in cramped handwriting. He leaves the drink for Yuta and spends the day mulling around, channeling his pent-up horny into dusting and vacuuming the entire apartment. 

Yuta texts him in the late afternoon: _bringing home pizza for dinner :),_ and Mark could kiss him. 

_sounds good!_ He responds, and, for good measure, practices his new life motto in front of the mirror a few more times.

Mark camps out on the couch until Yuta comes home and jumps up to help him with the door when his key gets stuck. They eat dinner and watch Pulp Fiction— _again_ —and Mark tries to calm his telltale beating heart to no avail. 

He doesn’t make it through the second diner scene. Something in him is telling him he has to have Yuta _now,_ has to tell him ASAP or he’ll disappear into the night and Mark won’t get another chance to feel those tentacles in all the ways he so desperately wants to. He picks up the remote, presses pause, and turns to Yuta sitting next to him. Yuta’s arm is thrown up across the back of the couch, and if Mark had leaned to his left during the movie he would have found himself tucked nicely in the crook of Yuta’s body. He mentally curses himself for not noticing this sooner, then steels himself and meets Yuta’s curious gaze.

Mark takes a deep breath. 

“Tentacles,” he says on the exhale, a sharp gust of wind that flutters the fiery hair falling soft across Yuta’s forehead. He feels himself smirk, feels a spike of adrenaline race up his spine.

Yuta looks stunned for a moment, then throws his head back and laughs. Mark anticipated this reaction and grins himself, shifting to sit cross-legged on the couch and face Yuta head-on. 

Yuta composes himself quickly, still grinning, and turns to mirror him, tucking his legs up under himself. There are a few short tentacles curled around his torso, and Mark watches one of them move to fiddle with the silver hoops lining Yuta’s ear, delicate, gentle. 

“Say it again,” Yuta demands, eyes bright.

“Tentacles,” Mark repeats, clenching his hands in his lap. One of the tentacles drifts closer, hints at touching his leg, and Mark shifts to press his knees right up against Yuta’s, initiating first contact.

Yuta leans forward. “Again,” he whispers, and Mark tucks his chin a little so he can look up at Yuta through his lashes.

“Tentacles,” he whispers, and reaches out slowly to touch the nearest one right on the tip. Yuta’s breath hitches. He still has his work shirt on, and Mark wonders distantly if his tentacles are deft enough to undo buttons on their own. 

Like Yuta can read his mind, one of the tendrils hovering over his shoulder moves down to the top button, splitting itself into two branches at the end to loosen his shirt. Mark gulps, still meeting Yuta’s golden gaze, and watches as the bottom of his vision is slowly overcome with tan skin. 

“Are you sure?” Yuta asks, lips quirked. 

Mark nods his head, feels his cock twitch, and looks at where his hand is pressed against soft peach. 

It feels squishy, more so than the ones he felt the first time. It feels a little bit like the slime Mark _hates_ —why did that stuff ever become a trend—but he doesn’t mind it. It gives easily to the squeeze of his hand, like a stress ball, and Yuta huffs out a little laugh as Mark begins tightening and releasing, tightening and releasing. 

“Tickles,” Yuta explains when Mark meets his gaze with curious eyes. Mark grins, and stops squeezing, opting instead to wrap his fingers entirely around the girth of the tentacle and start moving his hand back and forth on its length. It’s kind-of a dry slide at first, smooth but rough all at once, until Mark feels the tentacle get slick, feels cool liquid ooze between the cracks of his fingers and ease the slide of his palm. He wrinkles his nose, remembering that Yuta said he could make them wet.

“What is this stuff?” Mark asks, ever-curious. 

Yuta just shrugs. Mark notes the pale pink flush of his chest, the pretty, erect, brown nubs of his nipples, and reaches up to adjust his glasses, blushing a little bit. 

“I don’t really know. It just kind of… It’s water-based, I think, cause it’s hydrophilic and doesn’t fuck with condoms or anything. It just kind of happens when I need it to.”

Mark nods, only half-satisfied with this explanation, and reverts his attention to the pale skin of his hand sliding across pretty peach. “Oh. Well, cool, I guess.”

Yuta laughs, and suddenly there’s a hand on Mark’s jaw, gripping his chin and turning his face gently towards Yuta’s. Mark’s own hand stills, then drops to rest on his thigh.

Yuta’s eyes are warm, sharp, devilish. He looks gentle in the low light of their apartment, right cheekbone casting a shadow over his jaw in the light of the paused TV. “Say it again,” he demands, and Mark feels something tighten in his chest.

“Tentacles,” he murmurs, thanking God for all his practice. “You have tentacles, and I think that’s kind of hot. Please touch me with them.” He says it all with a blush on his cheeks and the pounding of his own heart in his ears. His dick is half-hard and there’s a tentacle tracing up the inside line of his arm and as it brushes across the fine hairs there he shivers, knees knocking hard against Yuta’s own. 

Yuta bites at the inside of his bottom lip in a familiar manner, and Mark knows he’s getting ready to be cheeky.

“Where, Mark?” He asks, head tilted. “Where do you want me to touch you?”

Suspicions confirmed.

Mark sits up straighter and meet’s Yuta’s glittering gaze with as much gusto as he can manage. He thinks over his possible responses, opens his mouth to say something dumb and hot like ‘My dick,’ then talks himself out of it and opts to shrug instead. The self-conscious monster from the last few weeks takes over and he curses it to hell and back as Yuta grins at his uncertainty.

“C’mon, this is the easy part babe.” The pet name makes Mark shiver. “Help me help you, please,” Yuta says, earnest as he leans forward to place one hand atop Mark’s own on his thigh. Mark shivers at the contact, and twists his wrist so their hands are palm to palm. Yuta fits his fingers easily between Mark’s and grips tight. Mark returns the gesture eagerly.

“E-Everywhere,” he stutters out before he can stop himself. He takes a deep breath and steadies his voice. “Everywhere, Yuta.” He remembers the slick feel of the tentacle against his nipple the other night and shivers. “Everywhere,” he whispers, and Yuta leans even closer. Mark watches his pupils dilate and swallows.

The tentacle in his hand turns chilly for a moment, and Mark looks to it for a split second, distracted. In that second, Yuta extends another one to brush at the nape of Mark’s neck. Mark gasps, scrunching his head down, then giggles and rolls his shoulders, adjusting to the feather-light touch as best he can. It feels _good_ and sets his nerves ablaze, a match to gasoline. His hips push forward on their own and Yuta’s eyes dart down to rake across the crotch of his sweatpants before flitting back up the lean lines of Mark’s torso. 

“Are you sure?” Yuta repeats, giving Mark’s hand a tight squeeze, and Mark rolls his eyes.

“Yes, please, get on with it.” The brattiness in his voice is a welcome sign to both of them, a testament to his growing comfort and arousal. Yuta grins, sharp and pointed, and then there are two tentacles dipping under the hem of Mark’s shirt.

His eyes widen and he gives the tentacle in his hand a sharp squeeze on accident, watching as Yuta’s lips part at the compression. The tentacles roam across the flat expanse of his abs, fiddle with the short hairs in his happy trail, and trace the gentle divots of his ribcage. He shivers at their inquisitive exploration, jerking with a grin as one of them rubs gently at the sensitive skin of his armpit. 

His cock is quickly growing hard, and his grip on Yuta’s hand is vice-like. Yuta’s running his tongue across his own teeth, pressing it up against the plush pink of his lips, and, without thinking, Mark surges forward, intent on capturing those lips in a kiss.

A tentacle tightens around his waist, another around his shoulder, to hold him a mere inch away. He gasps, and gives Yuta an indignant look. “What,” he says, smug even in his restrained condition. “No kissing? Really? That’s where you draw the line?”

Yuta just grins. “No,” he says, teasing, and one of the tentacles dancing across Mark’s torso slips under his waistband. Mark’s hips buck and he curses his lack of self-control. “You’re welcome to kiss me, Mark.”

The tension across Mark’s shoulders is saying otherwise, and he glares daggers—they feel somewhat insignificant against the fully-decked armory Yuta is pointing at him—before leaning back. 

“Fine, whatever. You can play your silly little games just as long as you get me off—” Mark ends his statement with a gasp, stomach tensing as a cool touch brushes along the length of his cock through his boxers. 

Yuta grins. “Don’t worry about that, Mark. I’ll take good care of you.” Mark is inclined to believe him, despite how his eyes are glinting like flickering candlelight reflected in a calm pond. 

Yuta shifts to stretch his legs out—one off the side of the couch, one tucked between Mark’s thigh and the back cushions—and urges Mark to do the same so his muscles don’t cramp. Mark rolls his eyes as he obeys the thinly-veiled demand. “Taking care of me is right, I guess,” he says. The tentacle pressed against his dick stays put through the shift, and Mark shivers as the tip of it ruts up under the lip of his head, a pointed, focused touch that Mark wants a million of before the night ends.

Yuta nods at Mark’s statement, lips pursed. “You haven’t seen the half of it.” The sentiment is derailed by a second tentacle shoving its way down the front of Mark’s pants. This one slips into his underwear without hesitation, and Mark moans at the initial feel of it nudging up against the side of his cock. 

“Yuta, fuck, holy fuck,” he chants, fists clenching where they’ve found a home on either of his thighs. “It’s—It’s—holy _shit,_ ” and his entire torso lurches forward, bending him almost in half as the tentacle in his boxers wraps around the base of his cock.

“Nah, nah, c’mon,” and Mark is pushing the tendril away in a frantic motion. Yuta retracts all the points of contact between them in an instant, clearly fearful that Mark’s changed his mind again, but Mark just shakes his head and twists so he can shuffle out of his bottoms. “No, that was fine, that was good— _fuck_ , Yuta, that was so fucking good—I just wanna do it properly, you know?”

Yuta tilts his head, grinning as Mark’s cock pops free, fully erect and a deep, aching red at the tip. 

“Okay, yeah. That works for me,” and Yuta’s turning to pull his pants off as well. Mark takes a deep breath. 

Yuta’s dick slaps up against his belly, brushes against the dark curly hairs marking a path down to Yuta’s crotch like a rainbow pointing to a big, thick pot of gold that Mark wants to fit between his lips and suck on like a cherry popsicle. 

Mark feels all his muscles tense up at the sight, feels saliva bead on his tongue, and moans openly. One of his hands grips Yuta’s thigh, bracing him as he leans forward.

“Wanna feel you,” Mark gasps into Yuta’s cheek. “Wanna feel your cock, o—”

“Yeah?” Yuta’s cock jumps as he interrupts him. “Yeah? You wanna feel me?” Mark nods, hips canting forward, and marvels again at the tight stretch of Yuta’s abs as they clench.

Yuta pulls him—with his actual human hands and arms and tight, rock-solid muscles—until Mark’s straddling his lap, warm thighs to warm thighs. Mark settles there with a comfortable groan, feeling like maybe this is where he belongs, where his trajectory has been guiding him ever since the day he put out that damn Craigslist ad.

Mark breathes in the very air that passes hot from Yuta’s lips and grinds his hips forward, pressing their cocks together in a slick slide. Drops of tempered liquid drip onto the heads of their dicks from a tentacle hovering between their chests, and Mark bites his lip as Yuta throws his head back in pleasure. 

“Fuck, Yuta,” Mark bites out, feeling every muscle in his thighs clench as Yuta exposes the strong, tanned column of his throat. Mark longs to sink his teeth into the smooth flesh there, longs for fangs to make Yuta _bleed,_ and files that idea away for later examination. 

He settles for his human pair of pearly whites, dipping to nip and lick at Yuta’s neck and making him roil below Mark’s own body. A tentacle lodges itself around the back of Mark’s neck and holds him where he is, flush to Yuta’s torso, lips sucking a bright red raspberry into Yuta’s delicate skin. 

His cock leaks as the tentacle between them wraps itself around his base. Mark can’t see, preoccupied as he is, but it must shoot out a little tendril to play with his balls, squeezing them together, rolling them against Yuta’s own, and Mark whimpers into Yuta’s throat.

The tentacle around his neck lets up the pressure, and Mark shifts to press his lips hot and wet against Yuta’s. They kiss and grind and Mark feels for a second that this all may be some weird, fucked up teenage dream and he’s going to wake up in his little twin bed in Toronto with sticky sheets and amnesia and a sudden desire to go visit the octopus exhibit at the aquarium. 

But it’s not a dream—or even a nightmare—and Yuta is solid and warm beneath him, and his cock is twitching where it’s pressed to Mark’s, and his tentacles are smooth and slick, and Mark thinks that he would probably like to have one of them inside of him someday soon—maybe he’ll take Yuta back to his hometown and have him destroy his last dregs of sanctity on that very twin-sized mattress. 

The mark he left on Yuta’s throat is shiny with spit, and when Mark pulls away Yuta’s lips are too. He sits back on Yuta’s thighs and watches as Yuta plays with his own nipples with a skinny tendril of peach, contrasting prettily against his dark brown areolas. 

Mark takes initiative and reaches down between them, wrapping his hand around both of their cocks at once and thumbing across their crowns in smooth strokes, whimpering in time with the heaving of Yuta’s breath. Yuta lets him do this for a minute or two, gazing heavily into Mark’s eyes and dripping sweat that Mark wants to lick off his precious skin, before a tentacle flicks at Mark’s hand then pulls it off, holding it to the side as another tentacle takes its place. 

The smoothness is no less of a shock than it was ten minutes ago; it feels _weird_ to have such an easily-gliding surface pressed tight to his cock. Different than pussy—even _more_ velvety, as hard as that is to conceive—but absolutely no less pleasurable. Somehow, Yuta uses the lack of friction to his advantage, gliding smooth and snug up their lengths. Mark doesn’t bother to stifle his sounds and doesn’t miss the way Yuta’s eyes flash with every whimper of his name that falls from Mark’s lips.

Mark bucks into the tight loop, feels the tip of his cock bump up under the head of Yuta’s and moans. Yuta’s hands grip at his waist, kneading into his hips, and Mark wrenches his wrist free of the tentacle’s grip to wrap his own arms around Yuta’s shoulders, leaning in to press their foreheads together and look down between them at the sight of their cocks fucking up into a ring of deep peach that stands out starkly against their dark skin.

Yuta’s cock is shorter and thicker than Mark’s, and Mark wants to feel it heavy on his tongue, wants to lap up Yuta’s cum like it’s the divine nectar of the gods. His nose brushes Yuta’s when they inhale in time with each other and every grunt that punches out of Yuta’s throat is met with a responding whimper from Mark, the beck and call of the moon and the tides. 

“Yuta,” Mark whimpers, resilient. These little grunts are all he’s getting, the only crack in Yuta’s composure, and Mark wants more, wants recompense for how utterly wrecked he is himself. “Yuta,” and he rolls his hips, adding to the friction. Yuta’s breath hitches and Mark feels his thighs tighten up momentarily under his own. 

Another tentacle snakes down Mark’s front, patterning pseudo-suction cup marks into his skin. When it reaches their cocks, the suckers have vanished into its silky flesh and it wedges itself in between their dicks, right where Mark’s head smooths into his shaft, and Mark runs a hand up to tug on Yuta’s hair with a gasp.

“Oh fuck—Yuta,” and his back arches as the grip of the tentacle around their cocks squeezes him tight to the one in between. Yuta presses forward, fits his lips right under Mark’s ear and _bites,_ and Mark uses every last scrap of will he possesses not to come right then and there. 

“You’re so pretty Mark, so pretty for me.” Yuta punctuates it by fitting his teeth around the sharp bone of Mark’s jaw, clenching softly, and increases the pressure as Mark starts whining. He finally releases, sucking the line of spit connecting his lips to Mark’s skin back into his mouth, and grins up at him. “So good for me.”

Mark nods, hips stuttering, and feels his eyes widen as a smooth touch grazes his bottom lip.

A tentacle, exploring, taking the next step like Armstrong— _one small step for Mark, one giant leap for Markkind._ Mark looks deep into Yuta’s hawk eyes and opens his mouth.

The grip around his cock tightens, pressing their cocks impossibly tighter to one another, and Mark _feels_ Yuta’s balls tighten as the tentacle slips between his lips and touches the tip of his tongue.

 _Candy. Sweet like candy._ His blissed-out mind makes this simple connection and he hums in contentment, the vibration sending shockwaves up the tendril on his tongue and making Yuta sigh gently, twitch where his hand is gripping Mark’s thigh. Mark closes his eyes and hollows his cheeks, sucking on the end of the appendage and swirling his tongue around its tip. 

It _is_ sweet, and Mark attributes this to the liquid that fills his mouth, drips out around the tentacle and down Mark’s chin. It’s about an inch in diameter, just the right girth to push past his gag reflex and slide down his throat in a quick motion. Mark does gag a little bit, mostly out of surprise, and blinks back tears. Yuta’s fingers are digging deep into his thigh and his cock is so fucking hard against Mark’s own and the velvet slick tentacles around and against Mark’s dick are so _soft_ and _tight_ and Mark comes with his mouth stuffed full and Yuta’s hands warm on his skin.

“Fuck—” he groans as best he can around the tentacle in his throat, and Yuta pulls it out just enough so he can better hear Mark gasping and whimpering through his orgasm. Yuta bites his lip, smirking, and Mark can’t look away from those pretty brown eyes, those haughty cheekbones— _God_ he wants to paint them white—that spit-slick mouth. 

Finally, Mark tears his gaze away, looks down between them to see his cum dripping between their cocks and spilling out across the tentacle looped around them, and whimpers. Yuta ruts against him in the aftermath, chasing his own high, and Mark nods, frantic.

“Yeah, fuck, holy fuck,” he mutters, tightening his fingers into Yuta’s hair. “Come, fuck, Yuta, please come.”

Yuta huffs out a laugh, chest heaving, and Mark glances up to see his gaze locked firmly on the sight of his own cock disappearing each time he rolls his hips down. “You’re so hot, Mark, that was so hot,” and Mark’s warm cheeks heat even more.

“You really think so?” he asks, coy. “You like it when I come, oppa?”

The way Yuta’s eyebrows shoot up would be comical if Mark weren’t so fucking turned on. He revels in the surprise, in the way Yuta’s lips part like he’s ready to confess all his sins, in the way his thighs go rock-solid beneath Mark’s and his cock jumps once, twice, before he’s coming with a stuttered groan.

Cum oozes out over his crown, drips out over pretty peach, and Yuta’s eyes literally roll back in his head. Mark watches it all with his heart in his throat and stars in his eyes and he wants so desperately to kiss Yuta through it but worries, in his post-nut clarity, that that’s far too intimate for what they’re doing here.

Yuta breathes out his name like a prayer when he blinks away his haze, and Mark finds himself laughing, giggles until he falls forward and buries his face in the crook of Yuta’s neck. Yuta’s hands are warm against the small of his back.

“Well, shit,” Mark says, eloquent in the aftershocks. It’s muffled against Yuta’s skin, and Mark doesn’t try to resist the urge to bite into the tight muscle of his shoulder. Yuta jumps, then laughs as well. 

The tentacles pressed against Mark’s cock retract, and Mark pushes his hips forward one last time in search of some leftover friction with Yuta’s dick. He finds it and gasps at the sensitivity. Yuta lets his hands drift lower to squeeze at Mark’s ass, pulling him close.

“Well,” Yuta starts, and Mark’s heart jackhammers against his ribcage. “Satisfied?”

Mark pulls his head back from Yuta’s shoulder, looks him dead in the eye, and grins. “Jury’s still out, oppa.”

Even if Yuta didn’t have tentacles and strange, otherworldly eyes that Mark wants to get lost in, Mark would be intimidated by the look he gets in response. Yet even as Mark blushes, those eyes soften, and Yuta reaches up to put a hand on Mark’s chest, right over his heart. 

“Your heart’s beating really fast,” Yuta says, and Mark gives him a little half-smile. He mirrors Yuta, pressing his fingers hard against the soft skin of Yuta’s breast.

When he finds that Yuta’s heart is just as frantic, his smile widens. He drops his hand and shrugs his shoulders.

“Probably just fear, y’know,” he says, cheeky. A tentacle flicks him swiftly in the forehead, and Yuta laughs with him. Mark watches his face light up—takes in the creases beside his eyes, the warm glow of his cheeks—and wonders if maybe tentacles are God’s reward for his favorite angels.

Something buds in his chest at that thought, a little shoot of green that’s found its first ray of sunshine and is stillhungry for more. Mark looks deep into Yuta’s eyes, and that shoot winds its way around Mark’s frantic heart and _squeezes_ —hard enough to release telltale butterflies into Mark’s stomach. 

_You like him,_ those butterflies seem to say in the flapping of their wings, and Mark feels the claws of a proper, mind-numbing, tummy-aching crush dig into his gut.

Uh oh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :) mark is catching feelings... does yuta feel the same? does yuta just think marks cute? does yuta just want to rail mark with his tentacles until he forgets his own name? answers to these questions and more coming your way sometime soon <3
> 
> let me know your thoughts!!  
> [twt](https://twitter.com/divinerenjun) | [cc](https://curiouscat.qa/divinerenjun)


	2. liminal space

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuta fits himself between Mark's thighs and presses closer, kissing him until he forgets all about tentacles and dirty dishes and whether this is crossing some sort of boundary.
> 
> Well, he forgets about the tentacles until one of them brushes the side of his calf and he kicks out, startling Yuta off his lips. Mark looks down, sees the culprit, sees ten of its friends spread out around Yuta like a peacock’s tail feathers, and laughs himself right into Yuta’s arms. 
> 
> He fits there perfectly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello!! thank you all for waiting so patiently for this update!! before we finish up this dazzlingly romantic love story i have a few heads ups for you:
> 
> 1\. there’s one (1) sentence of somnophilia that hasnt explicitly been consented to in this fic but mark is into it. he’s so into it. like seriously so so into it. he wants it to happen more. they probably have talked abt that fantasy before. just a heads up though
> 
> 2\. yuta punches (?) marks stomach while theyre having sex? its not really punching its just like. pressing his weight down onto it. mark asks him to do it because he likes that stuff. 
> 
> 3\. theyre so cute yall. like they seriously are so good together i love them. this has been such a fun fic to write <3 enjoy!!!

Mark is not satisfied. 

If anything, his curiosity—his _lust—_ has increased tenfold, making his stomach do flips whenever he glances at the couch and sending his brain into overdrive every time he passes by Yuta’s closed bedroom door. It takes every last scrap of will he possesses not to break the door down and beg Yuta to ravage him right there in the hallway. 

Having tentacles wrapped around his cock is one thing. Feeling Yuta’s erection pressed tight to his own is one thing. 

Mark doesn’t want _one_ thing; he wants it all. Every last inch of peach shoved up his ass, down his throat, wrapped around his waist, and it’s _disgusting_ —god, he feels like such a pervert—but he can’t help it. He shoves his hand down his pants at least twice a day and uses enough lube to grease his grip that he can imagine it’s whatever liquid Yuta’s tentacles secrete and not just bottled slick. 

Not enough.

Never enough.

He’s like a cat, curiosity teetering on the edge of self-sabotage. He’s gotten a taste and he wants _more,_ a full-fucking-course meal. 

Yuta knows. Of _course_ he knows, and his constant sharp grin gives it away even more than the way he raises his eyebrows when Mark emerges from the shower after a particularly fulfilling, tentacle-inspired orgasm. 

“Hi, Mark,” he says, sipping water from a glass cradled tight in a thick tendril of peach, and Mark feels his face pale before he steels himself and carries on with his day. 

Even more than the general, weird, horny tentacle thoughts, there’s the self-conscious, rational worry regarding the sanctity of their friendship.

Mark doesn’t know what Yuta thinks about their night on the couch—doesn’t know whether he thinks it was just a one-night stand (squat? Sit? Does it even count as a one-night _stand_ if they didn’t have sex?), or an amiable fuck between friends—as Yuta’s obviously experienced with Ten—or something more. He doesn’t know if Yuta thinks about it as much as he does, or if he’s moved on and is totally chill with the whole thing, or if he’s secretly harboring ill will towards Mark and is packing his bags to move out.

The uncertaintyis back, and even though Mark isn’t spending every free minute chanting ‘tentacles’ in front of the mirror like he’s trying to summon some horny Bloody Mary anymore, he _hates_ it. He wants Yuta to be thinking about it, he thinks. He wants Yuta to want _more_ just as much as he does. 

For some weird reason, that uncertainty fades when he’s actually _around_ Yuta. Yuta’s always been a playful, touchy person, and Mark finds himself unconsciously mirroring those sentiments when they’re together, just as he has in all the months they lived together before the tentacle-handjob. 

When Yuta seems to be teasing him—letting a touch linger too long, grazing a thin tendril across his thighs when they sit pressed together on the couch, winking when he spies Mark licking the last drop of ice cream from his spoon in the kitchen—Mark teases back. 

This is familiar territory: this feels like _flirting,_ like they both want each other and both know it—and even if that’s not actually the case, Mark is good at this. His teenage years were spent doing pretty much nothing _but_ this, so he’s certainly got the practice, and he strongly believes he gives himself enough credit for being hot. 

Plus, Yuta makes him feel confident, with all his encouraging remarks about Mark’s school work and his wolf-whistles when Mark nearly beats him in a spur-of-the-moment arm wrestle (that _certainly_ didn’t have anything to do with Mark wanting to feel Yuta literally overpower him, no way, not at all.). 

All Mark’s flirting practice from high school pales in comparison to The Nakamoto Yuta with his charm dialed up to eleven, however, and Mark finds himself darting off to the shower after nearly every conversation they have. It’s not his fault that Yuta wears _really_ skimpy gym shorts when he runs and his thighs are so golden that they glisten under the thin sheen of sweat soaking his skin; or that when Mark fights fire with fire and stops wearing a shirt around the house, Yuta can’t seem to remember that his eyes are _above_ his neck, thank you very much; or that every time their skin brushes Mark kind of feels like he’s on fire. 

Yuta suggests offhand after dinner one day that they should invest in soundproofing the bathroom, and that’s when Mark breaks.

“You know,” he says, brandishing a fork in Yuta’s direction like it’s Excalibur. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were insinuating something, oppa.”

At this, Yuta stiffens, whole body going rigid in a second. Mark’s eyes widen and he fears momentarily for the plate Yuta’s drying, nearly reaches out to grab it from his white-knuckled hands to ensure its safety. 

After a moment, Yuta recovers, flashing Mark a sharp grin. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” he quips.

Mark shrugs, dunks the fork in soapy water, and starts scrubbing. “I’ll just be quieter in there if it bothers you that much, oppa,” and he laughs at the indignant look Yuta shoots him.

“You little shit,” Yuta says, and the playfulness in his voice is offset by the sudden, overwhelming presence of his tentacles. Mark feels his eyes go stupid wide.

Yuta smirks. One of the tentacles drifts towards Mark like a magnet to the metal of his glasses. It fiddles with the thin metal arm where it loops over Mark’s ear, pushing the bridge down to the tip of his nose. Mark sighs, reaches a soapy hand to push them back up, then gives Yuta a glare when the tentacle whips his glasses clean off his face, dangling them just out of reach over the sink.

“Yuta, stop. Give them back.”

Yuta puts down a dry bowl, one of the ones Mark’s parents gifted him when he moved to Texas, and grins. “Or what?” he asks. “What’ll you do if I don’t?”

Mark’s eyes dart from tentacle to tentacle, taking in Yuta’s battalion and calculating just how likely he is to make it out of this situation unscathed. The tentacle holding his glasses twists, bending towards Yuta to place them snug on his face. Yuta squints against Mark’s prescription.

“Now what, Markie?” he asks, cocky even when his vision is blurred to shit. “I’m _so_ scared—” and then Mark’s dropping the spoon in his hand, splashing soapy water all over his shirt, and stepping forward into Yuta’s personal space. One of Yuta’s tentacles is slow to retreat and it brushes the top of Mark’s head, a silky touch against his hair. Mark pays it no mind.

 _Boys,_ Mark thinks. _Why do they always think stealing my things is going to make me like them?_ He remembers Liu Yangyang from freshman year, snatching pens from his very hand in the library and taunting him with promises of their return in exchange for a kiss. 

Yangyang’s tactic worked, eventually, but that’s besides the point.

“Give them back, please,” he demands, drawing up to his fullest height and ignoring the fact that Yuta looks stupid-cute behind the big round lenses, “or I’ll do something stupid.”

Yuta grins like a satisfied cat. “Not if I beat you to it.”

They meet somewhere in the middle, and Mark can be happy with a first-place tie. Yuta’s lips are soft—if a little chapped—and the warmth of his hands as they fit around Mark’s waist feels like a lightning strike. He pushes gently until Mark’s legs are pressed to the low cabinets lining the kitchen and he’s veritably shaking in Yuta’s grip. 

Yuta lifts him, then, just a little nudge of strength in the ‘up’ direction, and Mark takes the cue to jump up and sit on the counter. Yuta fits himself between his thighs and presses closer, kissing him until Mark forgets all about tentacles and dirty dishes and whether this is crossing some sort of boundary.

Well, he forgets about the tentacles until one of them brushes the side of his calf and he kicks out, startling Yuta off his lips. Mark looks down, sees the culprit, sees ten of its friends spread out around Yuta like a peacock’s tail feathers, and laughs himself right into Yuta’s arms. 

He fits there perfectly.

♦♦♦

Thus begins another week of torture for Mark Lee.

Something about their dishwashing escapade opened a literal door to Hell in the middle of their apartment, and Yuta is more unpredictable than ever. He touches Mark with his tentacles more: using one to wipe sticky syrup off the side of Mark’s mouth after he makes pancakes, draping one across Mark’s shoulders in place of his arm while they watch movies, wrapping them around Mark’s wrists and tugging gently when he wants Mark to stand closer to him.

He often knocks on Mark’s door in nothing but his skimpy little boxers, invites himself into the room and scooches up real close on Mark’s bed to give him these hugs that aren’t really hugs at all, more like an attempt at enveloping Mark’s entire being, absorbing Mark’s very soul into himself like some strange step of mitosis. 

Mark likes it. He likes the feeling that comes with Yuta’s arms around him, with Yuta’s face pressed tight to the crook of his neck and his tentacles hovering around them like a forcefield, protecting them from the harsher questions about their evolving relationship that Mark sometimes lays awake at night wondering about. He likes feeling overwhelmed, breathing in nothing but Yuta’s scent, touching nothing but him and the bedsheets, feeling nothing but his heartbeat pressed tight to Mark’s chest. 

Mark takes it upon himself to be unpredictable, too, though it’s hard to tell whether your own actions seem out of character when you’ve thought them through a million times before putting them into action—thoroughly premeditated and positively brimming with words left unsaid. 

He kisses the top of Yuta’s head while he’s sitting alone on the couch, then darts away, blushing, when tentacles pop out of nowhere and reach for him like flames of a forest fire. He knocks on Yuta’s closed door with a hand shoved down his pants and the taste of sweet, sweet danger on his tongue, holds active conversations through the door as he gets off to nothing but the sound of Yuta’s voice saying his name and the vivid picture of peach tendrils wrapped around his cock. He gives it his all in the shower, moaning Yuta’s name like a prayer to the heavens and hoping with some twisted part of his mind that Yuta hears him and is getting off, too.

So, it doesn’t come as too much of a surprise when Yuta knocks on the bathroom door as Mark lathers soap down the lengths of his arms and plots ways to incorporate the word ‘oppa’ more frequently into his daily vocabulary.

Mark’s heart still stutters, though, when Yuta asks if he can come in. “Yeah, sure,” he replies, and he prides his voice for not shaking. The door clicks open, and soft footsteps pad in his direction.

Their shower curtain is midnight blue, with abstract triangles dotted across its fabric like some artistic rendering of a deep sea dive. Mark stares at the dark material until he swears it could light into flames, picturing the golden skin exposing itself slowly to the steamy bathroom air on the other side of it as the soft sounds of Yuta’s clothes hit the floor. He prepares himself mentally for whatever happens next, and gasps when the curtain is pulled open and Yuta pokes his head through.

He grins, looking Mark up and down. “Nice view,” and Mark rolls his eyes even as he shifts under that sharp gaze. One of his hands sneaks down in a futile attempt to cover himself as Yuta steps into the shower. He closes the curtain behind him with a snap and the darkness that permeates the space seems heavier than it had before. Sometime after their night on the couch, Yuta apparently found the time to get a goddamn belly button piercing. It’s tantalizing against his bare, tan skin, perfectly spherical and silver and suggestive, glinting in harmony with the cross necklace Yuta wears around his neck. Mark gulps.

They stand a foot apart, Mark’s hair dripping diamonds down his back as he watches Yuta’s skin catch the water’s spray and turn glossy, like he’s covered in lip balm. Mark licks his lips, blinking water from his eyes, and Yuta lets them all out.

In the cramped space of the shower—barely built to fit two bodies, and _certainly_ not meant to hold two bodies and one of those bodies’ shroud of extra appendages—they are intimidating. Mark feels himself cower a little bit, despite the knowledge that this is _Yuta_ and he wouldn’t hurt a fly. They fan out around Yuta like the back of a throne: curved and plush, fit for a king. Yuta is royalty in his wetness and Mark feels the urge to get on his knees in the presence of such power.

And so he does. He sinks to the floor, feels cold tile press hard into his kneecaps, and looks up at Yuta with his hair dripping into his eyes. His hands find their home on Yuta’s thighs, and his king steps forward into the shower’s deluge, close enough that Mark can _smell_ him and feel the warmth rolling off his skin in waves. He nuzzles the tip of his nose against Yuta’s silver piercing, watching through his lashes as Yuta’s abs all clench up at the contact, then sits back on his hanches.

Mark lets his mouth fall open, sticks out his tongue demurely, and gasps as Yuta uses a thin tentacle to guide his cock into Mark’s mouth, a key to a lock, the cliché sword to its sheath. Made for each other. Meant to be.

Yuta has a delayed reaction to the warmth of Mark’s mouth, hissing under the steam after a few seconds of his dick resting soft against Mark’s tongue. Mark smiles despite himself and starts mouthing up the side of Yuta’s cock, kitten-licking around his head until he’s heavier, thicker. Yuta’s thighs are rock solid under Mark’s hands and his breaths are the angels’ choir. 

When Mark sucks him back in, takes him all the way down to the base in one fell swallow, he’s rewarded with a groan and a soft tentacle brushing against his jaw, sliding slick down to wrap around the column of his throat where it’s stretched with Yuta’s girth. The tentacle squeezes, just a tight little pressure, and Mark gags instantly, swallowing it quick as pleasure overtakes the surprise. It feels _good_ —pressure inside and out, in harmonious combat with the physical limits of Mark’s throat.

Yuta tenses at the grip, and five fingers card gentle through Mark’s sopping hair, giving a sharp tug when Mark flits his eyes back up at Yuta, coy through his lashes.

“Fuck,” Mark hears, a soft breath from high above. He watches Yuta’s mouth fall open, watches his pretty lips curve around more expletives and exhales and whispers of Mark’s name. 

Mark pulls off, resting snug around just Yuta’s tip and reveling in the clench of Yuta’s abs as he sucks hard around his head. 

As he moves to lick up the length of Yuta’s cock—mouthing around his base, bringing a hand up to thumb across his balls—he shuts his eyes against a sudden, overwhelming sense of his own mortality. The fingers in his hair, the tentacle curling around his shoulders, the sharp coolness of the tile against his knees—they are incessant reminders that Yuta is here with him, in this tiny little shower, and he is otherworldly and strange. 

He is powerful, and Mark is on his knees, and Mark worries, for a second, that this is all they will ever be. His heart jumps in his chest at the thought that this may be all he ever gets: this power imbalance, this—as much as he tries to deny it—fear. 

So he pulls away, and wraps wet fingers around a slick tentacle hovering just within reach. The combination of his grip and the vacancy of his mouth catch Yuta’s attention immediately, and he looks down with questioning eyes.

Mark stares right back and wills his eyelashes not to flutter in the wake of the humid mist or Yuta’s intense, dark gaze.

“Yuta,” he whispers, and the grip in his hair tightens. “Yuta,” and there’s a tentacle brushing soft over the plushness of his bottom lip. Mark nearly gives in to the urge to lick up its length, take it into his mouth and _gag_ , but he holds out. “Yuta, you…” he trails off, uncertain even of what he wants to say. 

After a moment of silence (not uncomfortable—there’s a tentacle tracing soft patterns into the dips of his collarbones, another snaking up his thigh to dance down the curve of his hip, and Yuta’s eyes are intense but open, interested, _caring_ ), Mark pins down his words. 

“You’ll,” he gulps, “you’ll still take care of me, right?”

Yuta must get it, because he sinks down to Mark’s level: kneels before him on the hard tiles, cups his jaw, and kisses him. 

It’s brief, a simple connection of their lips, and then he pulls back and wraps Mark up into one of those all-absorbing hugs. Mark melts into it like molasses and inhales the damp scent of Yuta’s hair. With that scent comes an understanding, almost like Yuta is pushing the very thought into Mark’s head: _you have nothing to worry about._ Despite the tentacles trailing gentle lines up Mark’s back, Yuta seems more human in this moment than ever before. 

“Yes, Mark,” he says. “I’ll still take care of you.”

Mark pulls back, shivering at the sudden lack of warmth. He gives Yuta a once-over, taking in the commanding line of his jaw, the regal bridge of his nose, and gives him a nod. 

Yuta kisses him again, and it’s deep and slow and messy, and Mark wants it to never end. 

“Now,” Yuta says, grin sharp, eyes dancing wickedly “Will you finish sucking me off?”

Mark has the wherewithal to roll his eyes. “So needy,” he complains, even as he wraps a wet hand around Yuta’s cock and tugs once, twice, making him jolt. He revels in it, in the little gasp that drips from Yuta’s divine lips, in the successful attempt at breaking his composure. Nothing will ever compare to how absolutely debauched Mark feels as Yuta rises to his feet, gripping at the back of Mark’s head and guiding him onto his cock, but it’s a start.

♦♦♦

And so it continues.

They build each other up and grind each other down, and Mark feels a gravitational pull towards Yuta’s hands and tentacles at the end of every day. They get each other off each night like it’s another box to tick off their daily schedules, teetering on the edge of routine but maintaining a spark of intoxication that keeps it feeling interesting and _fun._

Their apartment begins to feel a little bit like a liminal space—transitional. The crossroads between something kind of weird and something kind of… good. 

Mark smiles a lot these days, in this liminal time. He smiles when he talks to Yuta, which isn’t a huge change and happens often. He smiles when he’s blowing Yuta, which _is_ a huge change, and only happens about half the time. He smiles when he _thinks_ about Yuta, which is pretty much all the time now. 

It feels a little bit sacreligious, all this smiling. 

It helps Mark’s sanity to see that Yuta’s smiling a lot these days too. 

They’re transitioning, and in that transition they’re growing. Mark’s more confident—he sees it himself, in the way he doesn’t hesitate to give Yuta’s tentacles little pets when they’re sitting together on the couch, in the way he can push Yuta up against the kitchen counter and kiss him breathless with little-to-no prompting, in the way he can hold eye contact while he swallows Yuta whole and begs him to come down his throat.

Yuta grows more sly—a feat Mark believed impossible—and (well, maybe Mark’s projecting), more soft. Sometimes he greets Mark in the morning with a single tentacle slipping between the open crack of Mark’s door, all the way to his bed, under his covers, and into his open palm, shooting out five little tendrils to hold Mark’s hand, all while he keeps himself tucked out of sight in the hallway. He uses the same tactic one day but slips the tentacle between Mark’s legs instead, wrapping around his soft cock and stroking slow to help ease Mark from the throes of slumber. 

The handjobs—tentaclejobs?—are mind blowing. They’re more satisfying than anything Mark’s ever experienced because Yuta is simply wicked with those things, and sexy as a person, and never leaves Mark hanging—sticks with it and gets the job done even when he’s come twice already and looks ready to fall asleep. They seem to get better each time, aging like fine wine, feeling slicker and slicker and tighter and tighter and Mark’s starting to develop a Pavlovian response to the sight of Yuta’s tentacles, starts getting hard at the first glimpse of pretty peach. 

Despite the growing sense of change looming on the horizon, shimmering like the deep orange sun kissing into the flat Texas skyline at twilight, Mark tries to ignore the crush that has sunk deep into his bones. 

The Pavlovian response isn’t just horny—it’s _warm_ and _good_ and keeps that smile on his face for more hours of the day than he’s ever been happy before. He wakes up every morning and walks to the kitchen with a smile on his face and Yuta on his mind. Yuta always comes in a few minutes later with his cozy sweatpants slung low around his glorious toned hips and a grin pulling at the corners of his lips, and, when Mark is lucky, he gives him a little tentacle kiss on the forehead. It’s all almost domestic, and Mark feels like they could have something really good here if they wanted. 

He doesn’t say it, though, even to himself. Any time the gentle whisper of ‘ _heaven is real and it’s here on Earth in Yuta’s arms_ ’ slithers around the edge of his brain he subdues it, smothers it back with thoughts of Yuta’s lips wrapped around his dick until it’s nothing more than a spot of light in the shadowy corner of his mind. 

He ignores the way Yuta looks at him with sheer, unadulterated fondness when Mark brings him a basket of his laundry: clean, folded, with the very essence of Mark’s fingertips pressed into the fabric fibers from his careful handling. He ignores it when Yuta starts making two smoothies every day—one a sickly, disgusting, chunky green and one a pale yellow with little brown flecks. Banana and chocolate, no yogurt, just the way Mark likes it. He ignores it when he reaches for Yuta’s hand while their cocks are pressed tight together and he’s breathing hard against Yuta’s lips—those tantalizing, pretty lips—and Yuta squeezes back like Mark is his lifeline, the one thing tethering him to this world. 

He ignores it all because there are _rules._ Not explicit, never written down or discussed or made official, but they slink through the door whenever Mark considers stepping over the line. They sink into the dark corners, looming like some twisted elephants in the room, unspoken and relentless, reminding him of his place. 

The first on the list: no kissing during orgasms. This one _sucks_ and they’ve both gotten so close (touched tongues while Mark was coming one time, that was kind of weird) but never actually _done_ the thing, mouth to mouth. Mark gets it, remembers the first couch handjob that feels like it was ages ago and recalls his instinctual association between kissing and intimacy. 

They kiss during the rest of it—the buildup, the aftermath, the in-betweens; in the kitchen in the early morning when Yuta’s mouth tastes like black tea and Mark still has morning breath; late at night before they go their separate ways—and none of that feels weird. It feels _good_ , actually, and is a significant part of the reason for Mark’s ever-present smiles. 

But during the act is a whole different consideration. Mark doesn’t question it, and Yuta doesn’t push the issue.

The second: absolutely no labels. This one is pretty self-explanatory. Mark doesn’t want to have that discussion—with Yuta _or_ with himself, so he doesn’t really consider this one for too long. The question is on the tip of his tongue sometimes without him even thinking about it, though: _‘what are we?’_ like a phantom of insecurity taking over his lips and mouthing the words when Yuta has his back turned.

He washes his mouth out with banana smoothie every time this happens. 

And, last but _certainly_ not least: no hole stuff. This one is kind of weird and frustrates Mark sometimes, when he’s alone in his room and glaring daggers into the wall between his bedroom and the bathroom where Yuta’s showering, scissoring himself open and aching for a tentacle between his legs in place of his own fingers. 

Again, dick stuff is great, but the whole reason this thing started was Mark’s out-of-control imagination telling him it would be hot to have tentacles in his ass. Even the parts of Mark’s brain that are _in_ control agree with this sentiment now, and it takes every scrap of will he possesses not to break down and beg Yuta for it every time a thick peach tendril slips between his thighs when they’re making out.

He doesn’t watch porn anymore—hasn’t needed to, has had the spitting image of his wettest dreams on hand whenever he gets horny these days—but whenever he starts thinking about this, actually fucking Yuta, he opens an incognito tab and gets halfway through typing the words “tentacle porn” straight into the browser’s search bar before he catches himself.

If Yuta gave even so much as a hint that he wanted to actually have sex, Mark thinks he could work up the confidence to ask him himself.

The thing is, Yuta seems content with what they’ve got going on. He doesn’t seem to feel the same ache for this next step that Mark’s started to feel every time his heart beats (Mark willingly ignores the rational idea that he himself is probably not exhibiting any obvious signs in this regard either). 

Another reason for his lack of confidence, he finally admits to himself, is because he doesn’t even know what Yuta _is._ The thought hits him like a freight train one night when they’re lounging together on the couch. Yuta’s tucked up against his chest, hair tickling Mark’s chin, and a tentacle is draped soft across Mark’s thighs, tracing gentle patterns into his skin. A tentacle, like, a real-life tentacle. Yuta has real-life tentacles.

What the fuck?

Yuta turns in his arms to kiss him then, and Mark shoves the confused thoughts away for that evening, but they dance around his mind for the rest of the week. A part of him is scared—terrified, really. While he’s willing (more than willing, let’s be honest) to accept the fact that Yuta has tentacles, he is certainly not excited at the prospect of discovering there are aliens or monsters or something inhabiting the earth.

Despite the nerves and fear that creep in at the thought of such possibilities, Mark is a problem-solver. Give him a question and he will stop at nothing to find the answer. So now that he knows the issue—part of it, at least—he can tackle it.

Even if that weren’t an inherent aspect of Mark’s nature, this is _Yuta_ he’s talking about. Yuta, who’s promised to take care of him. Yuta, who kisses him like the world is burning to ash around them. Yuta, who makes him smoothies, and holds his hand, and hugs Mark with everything he’s got, and makes him feel more safe than he’s ever felt before. From him, Mark can handle the truth. If there’s a whole race of extraterrestrial beings out there, that news will be easier to accept coming from the lips of the man Mark jerks off every other night. 

♦♦♦

“Yuta,” Mark finally works up the courage to ask it one lazy afternoon, engulfed in the folds of Yuta’s blood red beanbag as his heart pounds. “What, like, _are_ you?”

He expects a characteristic Yuta laugh, that suave nonchalance that Mark could get high off of. When Yuta simply looks at him, eyes blank, lips pressed to a thin line, Mark can’t stop himself from recoiling a little bit.

“S-sorry,” he stutters, confused and concerned that maybe he’s offended Yuta somehow, or that his inquiry is sparking bad memories or something.

“No, it’s fine,” Yuta reassures him, and a weight lifts off Mark’s shoulders. The somber, distant look on Yuta’s face doesn’t fade, though, and it’s almost another full minute before Yuta continues speaking. “I’m just a human, I think.”

Mark just stares in disbelief. It takes him a second to realize Yuta isn’t joking, and when he does, he lets out a short bark of incredulous laughter. “Dude, you have tentacles. I don’t think you’re ‘just a human’.”

Yuta rolls his eyes, and swivels around in his desk chair to face Mark head-on. “Okay, yeah, but nothing weird has ever shown up at the doctor’s office or anything. All my X-rays and mouth swabs and shit come back normal, with human DNA and stuff. None of us really know what we are—”

Mark starts. “Hang on—wait. Hold up. Wait.” Mark _knows_ his eyes are wide as the fucking full moon, knows his jaw is hanging slack, but he doesn’t make any attempt to fix his expression. His brain is reeling, too occupied with processing what Yuta just said to try anything else. “Wait—what the fuck. Yuta. ‘Us’?”

Yuta makes a face like he’s just bitten down on something hard in a plate of scrambled eggs. Regret, confusion, and not a little bit of pain. “Okay, this is gonna be a weird conversation, probably. Do you wanna get, like, a glass of water or something?”

Even in his dazed, confused state, Mark preens at the care Yuta’s showing him. “Nah,” he chokes out. “Just–explain, please. Water can wait.”

Yuta gives him a nod. Mark’s past feeling worried about Yuta’s solemn expression, more intent on getting a decent explanation. 

“Okay.” Yuta sighs. “Okay. Let’s go back to the beginning. I started growing them when I was, like, thirteen I think—”

“So they were kind of like part of your puberty? That’s cool,” Mark interrupts, pondering.

Yuta shoots him an exasperated look. “Yeah, probably. I told my parents but they weren’t super concerned; I think they probably thought I was just being a difficult teen,” he shrugs. Mark finds himself leaning forward, engrossed. “Anyway, when they wouldn’t help me, I went where every teenager goes for weird answers for their weirdest questions. The internet.”

Mark nods. “Of course.”

“Of course.” Yuta echoes, smiling, but it’s tight around the corners and his eyes are dull. “Somehow I found this website—kinda like Reddit, just a big forum for people to talk about things like this.” Mark feels his eyebrows shoot up into his hairline. “Yeah, I know. And I definitely saw some shit I shouldn’t have at that age, but it was comforting to know that there were other people out there going through the same stuff, you know? Even if I did kinda get scarred for life.” 

At this, Yuta hums, and lets out a short little laugh. “So, I kept kind of checking in on the forum for a few years, and monitored the, uh, growth, I guess. Of my tentacles. I never found anyone with ones exactly like mine, but there were enough people like me out there that I could feel safe about them and what they were doing and stuff. Enough to know that they weren’t dangerous, you know?” 

Yuta pauses for a sip of water, and Mark takes a moment to let it all sink in so far. He’s just about to barrage Yuta with questions when Yuta continues speaking.

“Yeah, there was some weird shit out there. But there were also nice people, and I was lucky enough to stumble across some really cool friends. With really cool special mutations and stuff.” At Mark’s questioning look, he clarifies, “Mutations—that’s what we call them most of the time. Just ‘cause no one really knows what they are.”

“That’s—”

Yuta cuts him off. “Anyway, yeah: some really cool people. There’s this one guy in China—he produces music, you’d like him probably—who has these giant wings. They’re neat; they kind of look like bat wings.” Yuta smiles a little bit. “And I hooked up with this chick who had tattoos of cats that moved all around her body, _she_ was neat.”

Yuta goes very still all of a sudden, like a snake poised to strike, and Mark draws back. 

“What?” Mark asks, nervous at the answer he’ll receive.

Yuta relaxes a bit, and thinks for a second, then seems to make up his mind with a shrug. “You know some other people like me, too. You know how Jaehyun’s eyes glow in the dark?”

Mark’s jaw hangs slack. “Yo, what the fuck, I always thought I was imagining that—”

“Or how Johnny’s teeth sometimes look really sharp? And his fingernails, too?”

Mark just stares for a moment before collecting himself. “You mean to tell me all my friends are fucking monsters?” he exclaims, then backtracks. “Or—wait… are _monsters._ And are fucking monsters. Monsterfuckers. Fuck, this is weird—”

Yuta cuts him off from what they both know could turn into a lengthy tangent. “Yeah, I mean, it’s nice for us all to be together, you know? To be around more people like us?” Mark nods. He can understand that sentiment, if not much else.

“Okay, Yuta, but like, what _are_ you? I get this all, and it’s cool and really… um… unique and stuff, but why do you have _tentacles_ and why don’t your parents? How does no one understand how you work?”

“I dunno, Mark! Maybe my great- great- great- great- great-grandfather fucked a squid. Who knows.” Yuta’s shoulders are tense, jaw clenched with all his anxious energy. Mark sighs, recognizing a unique opportunity to cross the border from something liminal to something substantial, and stands from the beanbag. 

“If he was _your_ ancestor,” he starts, stepping lightly across Yuta’s deep red rug, “I wouldn’t put it past him.” He reaches Yuta’s desk chair, stands close enough to bump their knees together, and cups his cheek in one hand. Yuta looks up at him, pressing into his touch, and Mark wants to scoop him up in the tightest hug he’s ever experienced and never ever let him go. 

“I don’t care, Yuta.” The words are out before Mark really considers them, and as he hears himself speak he swallows—processing, second-guessing, then resolving. “Yeah,” he continues, “I don’t really care. I mean, like, I care that there are other people out there with weird things like you—not that you’re weird, I mean—”

“I am, Mark, it’s okay,” Yuta laughs.

“Right. Well.” Mark smiles down at him, runs a gentle thumb across the smooth skin of his cheek. “In case you couldn’t tell, I, like, like you. And your tentacles.” He feels his cheeks turn pink, and has to drop Yuta’s sparkling gaze to stare down at the exposed skin of his thigh where his shorts have ridden up. There’s a mole on his right leg that Mark hasn’t noticed before, and he grazes his free hand against it absentmindedly. “I don’t really care how you got them,” he mumbles, “as long as you’re, like, safe. And not going to eat my brains or anything. And at least, like, 90% human. That’s good enough for me.”

Yuta’s silent. Mark doesn’t really expect a rejection—they’ve been teetering on the edge of this thing for so long it would truly come as a surprise—but the silence makes him look back up, tear his eyes away from the hickey his teeth left in Yuta’s inner thigh last night and meet Yuta’s gaze. 

After all this time, all this proximity and build-up and intimacy, Mark is a self-proclaimed Yuta expert. He _knows_ him, can usually read him like a book (aided by the fact that Yuta is _never_ one to shy away from his true thoughts and feelings), but what he’s met with now puzzles him. 

There’s just—nothing. 

Yuta’s looking at him with literally zero emotion on his face, and that is _terrifying._

“Yuta,” Mark stutters. His hand falls from Yuta’s cheek—and Yuta grabs it, clenches it tight enough to cut off Mark’s circulation, and slips his fingers between Mark’s. His vacant expression doesn’t waver, until Mark speaks again—whimpers, really. “Yuta,” and it’s just a breathy whisper, that little bit of fear Mark eradicated from his mind so many weeks ago reappearing and taking control. 

Yuta must hear it, that shakiness in his voice, and the corner of his mouth quirks up into a little half smile. “That’s—” he chokes, has to stop to clear his throat, and Mark relaxes the slightest bit, eased by this familiar, human action. “Those aren’t very high standards, Mark.” And then, it’s like a dam breaks, and Yuta’s grinning like the devil, and his eyes are warm, and his hand feels like home squeezed tight between Mark’s fingers. 

Mark could sob with relief, but he laughs instead, adrenaline from his confession and his fear mixing to exhilarate him to the highest degree. “Yeah,” he says, pressing forward to rest his knees on either side of Yuta’s hips and straddle him in his cushy desk chair. “You should have seen my old boyfriends—absolute shit, the lot of them.”

“Oh? Boyfriends?” Yuta asks, coy, and a tentacle appears out of nowhere, dragging along the pink curve of his smirk before he draws it into his mouth with his tongue. Mark gasps, delighted and fascinated by this subtle self-worship, and wonders if they taste like candy to Yuta too. 

He focuses back in on their conversation, realizing the implication of his words a beat too late.

“Hang—hang on, I didn’t mean, like—” he’s blushing like a fool, all the confidence from a minute ago vanishing under the weight of Yuta’s mirthful eyes. 

Yuta laughs, pulling the tentacle from his lips and wrapping it around Mark’s wrist in a gentle squeeze of comfort. “I’m kidding,” he says, and it shouldn’t make Mark’s heart sink, it really shouldn’t, but he feels a little twinge of disappointment all the same. “I know what you meant.”

Mark stares resolutely down at the folds of Yuta’s sweater. He’s not really sure what he meant in the first place. “Yeah. Just—y’know.” He shrugs, avoiding having to find a solution to his own inner confusion. 

They sit in silence for a minute. Yuta’s hands rest warm on Mark’s hips. It feels like he expects something, thought exactly what that might be Mark isn’t sure. 

“I just—”

“Do you—”

They speak at the same time then break off to laugh. Mark wraps his arms around Yuta’s shoulders. 

“You go,” he says, and Yuta shakes his head resolutely.

“You first.”

Mark rolls his eyes. “Fine. I just…” he trails off of his own accord this time, avoiding Yuta’s gaze. “I just don’t think...”

What. What doesn’t he think? No ready excuses come to mind to avoid the age old ‘what are we?’ question. His heart thumps a nervous rhythm. Yuta doesn’t seem to mind waiting for Mark to collect his thoughts—he’s so _patient_ and _good_ and _warm_ and Mark runs his thumb gently along the defined contours of his neck. The midday sun shines bright through the windows, reflecting off the pale dusting of surprise snow they got the night before and lighting Yuta’s room in a sharp glow.

“You’re really cool,” Mark finally says, and Yuta giggles, all teeth and smile lines, and Mark melts a little bit in his lap. 

“Thanks,” Yuta says. “So are you.”

“I just think that, like,” and his pulse is in his throat. Now it’s in his stomach. Now back in his throat. “I dunno,” he says, and he feels small. “I dunno, just. I like you. I really do, but, like, I don’t know what I want I don’t think,” and it feels _stupid_ , so stupid. They’ve gotten off together upwards of thirty times. Kissed more than a hundred times at, like, the _very_ least. Mark likes him. He really does. 

So why can’t he just accept what he wants. What he knows, deep down, is bound to happen at some point. Why is this kind of stuff so difficult?

To some extent he’s relieved that he feels this way—it’s such a human feeling, this nervousness. Familiar, a direct contrast to the peachy tendrils trailing soft circles into his skin under the hem of his shirt. 

_Yuta is human, too,_ he reminds himself, and for some reason that just makes his heart beat faster. 

He’s seized by the sudden urge to see if Yuta’s as affected by this non-conversation they’re having, so he places a hand on the left side of Yuta’s chest, right over his heart. It thumps frantically under his touch. Yuta grins.

“I don’t know what you’re thinking unless you tell me out loud, Mark. Unfortunately my tentacles don’t come with mind-reading powers.”

Mark laughs, but it comes out a little bit choked. Yuta sighs. 

“I’m guessing it’s the whole ‘boyfriend’ thing, because that’s… I mean… that’s what I’ve been thinking about while you’ve just been staring at me.”

Mark laughs again. His heart skips a beat. 

“If it’s stressing you out to think about, then stop thinking about it,” Yuta soothes, exasperated. He runs his thumb in little circles against Mark’s thigh, other hand rising to cup Mark’s jaw. Mark leans into the touch and tries to make himself relax. “I don’t think it really matters, y’know?”

“Yeah…” Mark says, still not convinced. Yuta sighs.

“I want to be your boyfriend,” Yuta says, and, woah, that’s a bit abrupt and not really what Mark wanted to hear but also exactly what he wanted to hear, so his heart skips a beat at the same time as his stomach does a weird swoop. Yuta looks sincere and determined, and Mark really doesn’t know how to respond, so he just keeps his mouth shut.

Good thing, too.

“I want to be your boyfriend, but I don’t think you’re ready. That’s not a bad thing or a good thing or anything, really, just. How it is.” Mark shifts in his lap, feeling guilty, but Yuta gives him an unimpressed look. “Don’t feel bad. I get it. I really do. I just want you to know that if or when you do feel ready, I’m here. Seriously,” he adds when Mark continues to avoid his gaze, “no pressure, but it’s up to you.”

Mark opens his mouth, still not sure what he’s even going to say, but a tentacle presses vertically against his lips, shushing him. Mark goes cross-eyed trying to look at it, and Yuta huffs out a laugh. 

“I’m not going to act any different around you after saying all this shit, okay?” Yuta says, and his tone snaps Mark’s focus back onto his face. Yuta looks into his eyes, searching, and he’s got this little smile on his face and a light blush on his cheeks and Mark can’t help but grin. Yuta _likes him_. Yuta _wants to be his boyfriend._ No matter how confused Mark feels inside, it’s nice to be wanted. Especially by someone like Yuta. 

“I’m not, and I expect you not to either, but I, like, get it if you do. It’s okay. Though I wouldn’t have said any of this if I thought it would scare you off or anything,” Yuta scratches the back of his neck. It’s fascinating, really, to watch him become this sort of sheepish version of himself. He still feels powerful and cool—like, seriously, the coolest person Mark’s ever met—but he’s so human. Knocked down a level by his confession. Tangible. Mark giggles and squeezes him between his arms. 

“You’re not—” the tentacle against his lips moves to rest lightly on his thigh, and Mark gulps. “You’re not scaring me off or anything, dude, I swear. This is… like…” he scrambles for the right thing to say. “And it’s not about the tentacles or anything, I _swear_ , it’s like. You’re just… really hot.”

Hmm. Good one Mark. 

“Thanks.”

“And I don’t want to make things awkward in the future, y’know? Like, what if we get together and then break up in, like, a month. We’d still be living together and stuff. That would just be weird.”

“Mark,” Yuta says, exasperated, and his hands slide gently up Mark’s sides, rubbing in comforting strokes like Mark is some kind of nervous cat. “I thought you were one of those ‘live in the moment’ people.”

“Yeah,” Mark mumbles, flushed at how well Yuta knows him, “I am.”

“So live in the moment.” Yuta’s thumb grazes Mark’s lower lip, trailing across it softly. “The future will come, and we’ll make it work, and if we act even the slightest bit awkward around each other at, like, any point of this, Johnny will knock sense back into us both.” He pauses, swallows. “I’m not trying to pressure you into anything, please don’t take this that way, but just know that I like you. And I think we could make it work.”

There it is. The golden truth, laid out before Mark like a buffet of all the most sinfully delicious foods. Everything is dusted in rose gold, tinted pink like the blush he knows is sitting on his cheekbones. They could make it work.

“Just. Just… give me a little while, okay?” he hears himself say, and something inside him curses himself out. “Labels just… scare me a little bit.” He mumbles the last part, words sticky on his tongue, but Yuta accepts them with an open smile.

“I get it. No pressure. Can I suck your dick?”

And that’s it. Conversation over. The thoughts that have been preying on Mark’s mind for the last month set out on his most delicate china dinnerware, and there goes Yuta upturning the table as soon as he walks in. It’s a nice kind of chaos. Mark finds that a few good cracks are just what he needed. Like letting out all the pressure in a coke can. Sweet release. He can’t help but laugh. 

“Be my guest,” he says, and Yuta’s tentacles are already slipping under his waistband. 

♦♦♦

Now that he knows what Yuta is— _human. Just a human—_ Mark’s body kind of takes over his brain and erases his hesitancy with straight up horny energy. His blood rushes south so quickly when Yuta starts kissing him sometimes that he nearly passes out. He _wants._ Every single cell in his body positively _aches_ with want, now that the nagging fear is gone. 

Beyond just being horny for it, Mark thinks he’s _ready._ Ready to take this to the next level, to give himself over entirely. He’s beyond fear, beyond shame, and he _likes Yuta._

He’s brushing his teeth when this realization washes over him. His reflection stares at him, wide-eyed, as the words sink in, like dust settling into place. _Like._ _You, like, like-like him_ , and he promptly chokes on his toothpaste. 

Crushing is one thing. Liking is another. Somewhere in between the handjobs and smoothies and kitchen kisses Mark has apparently crossed this line. He still feels hesitant at the thought of a real relationship, but Yuta’s reminder that he’s a ‘live in the moment person’ lends him strength in this moment. 

Mark spits in the sink. Toothpaste swirls slowly down the drain, moving at the pace of his thoughts, and Mark feels his heartbeat pick up. 

“Yuta,” he murmurs to the mirror, “I want you to fuck me.” 

He grins at his reflection. This one isn’t going to need a hundred repetitions to slide easily off his tongue. 

♦♦♦

“You know, I probably shouldn’t be the person you’re telling all this shit to,” Ten says. He’s wrapped in a cashmere blanket and sipping red wine from a plastic cup. The metal slats in his patio chair are digging sharp lines into Mark’s ass, and he shifts around, wishing he’d said yes to Johnny’s offer to go fetch the cushions from where they’ve been put in storage for the winter. Ten’s chair is cushy as can be, and he sits proud in his little throne, giving Mark an unimpressed look over the rim of his cup. “I have so much power over you right now.”

Mark sighs. “You would have found all this out anyway, I’m sure. When it comes to matters of the horny you’re like a fucking psychic.” They’re hanging out for the first time in months, and Mark almost forgot how good it feels to just get all his thoughts out on the table without fear of losing a roommate or friend. No matter how fucked up some of the things he’s feeling right now might be, Ten’s always got him beat one way or another. 

Ten grins, the perfect picture of a pleased feline. “This is true. Remember when you sucked Jaehyun’s dick in the bathroom at—”

“Yes, I remember, God,” Mark flushes. “I still have no idea how you figured out about that.”

“I have my ways.” Ten takes another sip. His lips are blood red. “Anyway, the picture you’ve painted is of you literally simping for Yuta’s tentacle dicks—

“Dear God,” Mark mutters under his breath.

“—and Yuta just being his normal, casual, effortlessly sexy self in the midst of this roommates-slash-friends-with-benefits situation you’ve got going on nowadays. Is this sounding accurate?”

Mark rolls his eyes. “Well, yeah—”

“Good. First of all, denying your real feelings is pussy shit—”

Mark interrupts, cheeks suddenly burning, “I am _not—_ ”

Ten cuts him off with an exasperated look. “ _Second_ of all, if you want him to fuck you he’ll fuck you.” Ten sets his cup down, empty, on the little glass table between them. Mark picks up his beer bottle and shivers in a breath of November air. 

“It’s… It’s more than that though,” he says after he’s collected his thoughts. “I’m not denying my feelings—don’t give me that look, I’m really not—and that’s kind of, like, the problem.”

“Explain.”

Mark sighs. Takes a sip. “I like him. I’ve kind of accepted that, but there are these, like… stupid worries in my head, I think…” he fiddles with a loose thread in the blanket Ten gave him. 

When a long enough silence has passed, Ten huffs. “Well? What is it?”

Mark rolls his eyes, working up the courage. “What if I don’t actually like him and I just feel like this ‘cause I wanna have sex with him,” he finally says, and it comes out all in one quick breath. Quiet and small. Ten tilts his head, considerate. Mark is grateful that, even though he’s able to make light of any situation, he hasn’t actually made fun of anything Mark’s said. He never does. Mark really does love him.

“Well, the only way you’re gonna figure that out is if you fuck him,” Ten says.

“I don’t want to hurt him.”

Ten sighs. “I know you don’t. And he doesn’t either. But, like, if you just talk to him about this, it’ll be fine, dude.”

“What if he doesn’t want to, though? Like, what if he thinks I’m weird for asking for more?” Mark feels his voice get quieter near the end of his question.

Ten leans forward, giving him a hard, searching look. “Mark,” he says, sounding almost confused. 

“Yeah?”

“Yuta has tentacles.”

“Yeah…”

“He is not in any position to think _you_ are the weird one in this relationship.”

Mark freezes, lips wrapped around the mouth of the bottle. After a moment, he takes a swig and sets it back down on the glass with a satisfying ‘clink,’ brow furrowed. “Okay, you know what, I hadn’t thought about it like that.”

“I figured you wouldn’t have.” Mark shoots Ten an exasperated look. Ten shrugs. “You have a tendency to self-sabotage in these situations. And that’s why you have me!” With this, Ten flashes a dazzling grin, framing his face with his hands, and Mark relaxes enough to laugh.

“I am lucky to have you, man,” Mark says, sincere. 

Ten just nods and waves a hand as if brushing the sentiment away. “Yeah, yeah, I know. Go tell Yuta he’s weird as fuck and that it still doesn’t stop you from wanting his tentacle cum in your ass. Or his heart cum in your heart ass.”

“Jesus, Ten—”

♦♦♦

It’s easier this time. Heeding Ten’s advice, Mark reminds himself over and over that he’s not weird for wanting what he wants. 

There’s a tiny part of his brain that screams at him for being a dirty, dirty liar every time he provides himself this reassurance, but Mark tells his brain it’s annoying and rude for kinkshaming him and it quiets down after that.

They’re rutting against each other on the couch, just like that first time, when Mark confesses it.

“Yuta, I want you to fuck me,” and his eyes fly open like he’s just broken through the surface of a lake, finally free of the water’s cold embrace: _Let there be light,_ he thinks, a blind man given the gift of sight. Yuta’s face is warm between his palms and he holds him tight, looks deep into his fiery eyes and tries to convey his sincerity. “I want you to fuck me,” he whispers, soft as his nose brushes Yuta’s, and Yuta comes against Mark’s cock like it’s what he was built to do. 

Mark watches his pretty eyelashes flutter, feels a smooth tentacle trail gently up the length of his spine, and leans in to kiss him through it. 

♦♦♦

There’s nothing special about the day they land on. 

A standard Saturday afternoon, with the weak winter sun glinting off Mark’s guitar as he strums it mindlessly. Yuta knocks on his door just as he gets ready to slip into a gentle John Mayer song, and Mark looks up to see him standing there in that _damn_ muscle tee, black joggers wrapped tight around his soccer calves, with a smile on his face that could compete with the stars.

“Hey,” Mark says, and he feels himself grinning as his fingers still over the frets.

“Hey,” Yuta replies, and he leans against the doorframe with practiced nonchalance, even though Mark can basically feel the energy thrumming through his veins from across the room. He’s so effortlessly sexy. Mark wants to play music on the curves of his ribs. 

They stare at each other in silence long enough for the tips of Mark’s ears to grow warm, and he shifts around on the edge of his bed, palms sweaty against sculpted wood. 

“Oppa,” he says, cheeky, teasing, and Yuta crosses the room in three long strides, grips Mark’s chin in his artist’s fingers, and kisses him until his mind goes fuzzy around the edges. Mark sighs against his lips, licking into the wet heat of him like it’s what he was made to do, and holds him close by the back of his head.

“Hey,” Yuta repeats when he finally pulls away, breath hot and heavy, forehead resting against Mark’s. He lifts the guitar from Mark’s grip and sets it on its stand nearby, then turns back to nudge a knee up between Mark’s thighs, pushing him down onto the bed with hands on both his shoulders. 

They make out for a little while, tongue against tongue, teeth biting, breath grating. Yuta grinds down against him, riddling his throat with gentle nips and long swipes of his tongue that leave Mark feeling a little bit gross and absolutely, terribly, completely turned on. Yuta bites at that specific spot beneath Mark’s ear that leaves him gasping, and then he pulls away.

“Can I fuck you?” Yuta asks, never one to skirt the issue. He’s hovering above Mark like a deity of immeasurable power. The devil on Mark’s shoulder. His eyes are sparkling, and his hair is falling into his eyes, and Mark reaches up to brush it back, cupping Yuta’s jaw with a gentle hand. Yuta got it cut the other day, buzzcut on the sides and back with two fine, shaved lines on the left side. He left the top part long, dyed it pure white like snow. He looks fierce. Mark grins up at him and rolls them until he’s on top.

“Sure,” he chirps, and Yuta pulls him down to him, biting at his lips and slipping two cold hands up under the hem of Mark’s shirt. Mark gasps at their temperature and the sudden intrusion, back arching. He pushes his hips down, ruts against Yuta, and they groan in harmony. “I mean, like,” he gasps between kisses, “only if you want to, though.”

Yuta pulls away to give him an unimpressed look. He scoots up the bed, pulling Mark with him by the waist, and Mark squeaks at the manhandling. Yuta settles him in his lap. The hard line of his cock presses between Mark’s asscheeks, and Mark likes it. He likes it a lot. He shifts around a bit, rocks his hips just to see the way Yuta’s eyelashes flutter.

“If I said no, what would you do?” Yuta asks, and Mark deflates a little bit, furrowing his brow.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Yuta scratches light fingernails up Mark’s sides, a bare pressure that leaves Mark shivering and aching for me. “If I just left you like this, hard and wanting, what would you do?”

“Probably just, like, get off,” Mark says, perplexed. Yuta’s shoulders slump.

“Work with me here, please, I’m trying to be sexy.”

“You don’t need to try,” Mark rolls his eyes, “but _fine,_ I get it. Do you want me to say I’d beg for you, or something?”

Yuta grins a little bit, amused, but the way his cock twitches under Mark’s ass gives him away. “Try it. See where it gets you.”

Mark rolls his eyes again, then loops his arms around Yuta’s shoulders and rolls his hips, a steady current of motion that sets all his nerves on fire. “If you left me like this, I’d—” he blushes, swallowing his embarrassment. “I’d beg for you, oppa.” It comes out kind of mumbly, but Yuta clearly gets the point. His nails dig into Mark’s hips, one hand sliding up to roll Mark’s nipple between slender fingers. 

“Then beg.”

Mark won’t say he hadn’t started to expect that a little bit, but it hits him hard just the same. He lets himself give in, hands sliding down around Yuta’s neck to palm across his chest, pressing his fingers into the meat of Yuta’s pecs and the corded muscles of his biceps. 

“Please, Yuta,” he says, and his voice is all breath. “Please fuck me, I’ve wanted this for so long. Please,” he begs, knocked down to the level Yuta wants him at, blushing furious and _so_ turned on. “I want your cock.”

He watches Yuta’s adam’s apple bob when he gulps. Bends a little bit to kiss it when it’s back in place. Revels in the way Yuta’s hips jump when he does. 

“Want my cock?” Yuta asks, and his voice is gravelly.

“Yeah, please oppa,” Mark pulls back and smiles. He feels safe. He feels _happy_ , but most of all he’s hard as a fucking rock and really does want Yuta’s dick. 

“Take your shorts off, please,” Yuta requests, but it sounds a little bit more like a command, and, okay, Mark can work with this. He can work with this for sure. He scrambles back, pulling his shorts off as quickly as he can without tangling them around his legs, and Yuta pulls him back as soon as they’re discarded, magnetic attraction. They kiss again, all teeth and tongue and fervor, and Mark wants to drown in it.

He slides his hands through the low-cut armholes of Yuta’s shirt, scratching at his ribs and letting his thumbs rub gently across his nipples, and Yuta throws his head back and gapes at the ceiling. Mark grins. 

“Condom? Condom _s_?” he asks, raising an eyebrow, and Yuta just grins, lowering his gaze to meet Mark’s.

“Don’t need ‘em,” he says, and Mark literally feels his asshole clench. 

“C-cool. Cool. I’m just gonna take your word for that, since you’re, like, the alien,” he says, and Yuta grabs his chin and pulls him up again to meet his lips. 

“I’m not an alien, Markie,” he mumbles, and Mark grins.

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” he says and reaches a hand down to grab Yuta’s cock through his pants. He rolls it beneath his palm, gripping tight along his length through the fabric, and Yuta’s whines against his lips. 

“Cool,” Mark repeats, breathless and raw, and Yuta mirrors his grip, squeezing his cock between his fingers and teasing Mark’s tip with his nails. Mark groans.

They feel each other up for a little while, reminiscent of their night on the couch that feels like it was eons ago, and Yuta is warm against him, and Mark is happy. He pauses in his touching to wrap his arms around Yuta’s middle and _squeeze_ , holding him as tight as he possibly can against his chest. Yuta lets out a little sound of surprise against his lips, then relaxes into his hold. Mark wants him to feel safe. Secure. As much as he does in this moment. 

As soon as Mark relaxes his arms, Yuta slides his fingers under the waistband of his boxers, and Mark supposes this is his way of showing the same emotion Mark just expressed. Yuta grips him dry, skin against skin, and Mark thinks it’s a little bit ridiculous that Yuta still has all his clothes on, so he grabs the hem of his tank top and tugs it off, knocking Yuta’s hand away in the process.

He bends in half, burying his face between Yuta’s pecs, and Yuta laughs above him, tangling his fingers into Mark’s hair. Mark kisses across his chest, down his abs, licking and sucking at golden skin and teasing that damn navel piercing until Yuta sighs and relaxes completely underneath him, giving a little warning shudder, and his tentacles slither into existence. 

Mark gasps, still in awe after all this time, and gulps. Yuta pulls him away from his abs with the grip in his hair, and Mark grunts at the sparks of pain in his scalp, then moans as a tentacle slips into his underwear and tugs his cock once, twice.

“O— _nnngh—_ okay,” Mark says, greedy. His hands white-knuckle Yuta’s waist, fingers pressing into taut flesh that turns pale beneath their harsh grip. “I get it. Can you, like, get on with it now, please?”

Yuta laughs again. He sounds _happy_ , and Mark mirrors his smile easily. 

“As you wish,” Yuta says, and Mark feels sweat drip down his temple like wax from a candle under the heat of Yuta’s eyes. 

Yuta surges forward to kiss him again, flipping them back around so Mark is shivering beneath him, and shucks off his pants and underwear. He is naked above Mark, and beautiful, and powerful, and Mark absolutely adores the way his eyes flutter when Mark takes his bare cock in his hand and thumbs across the slit, smearing precum around in the way he knows Yuta likes. 

Yuta ducks to kiss Mark’s neck, sucking a big fat hickey right under his jaw that Mark clicks his tongue at. Yuta just grins at his admonishment. 

“Here—” Yuta says, and paws at the hem of Mark’s shirt. Mark sits up to help him pull it off, then tugs him down against him, chest to chest, heart to heart. He’s _so warm_ , and Mark isn’t much better, feels the blood rushing everywhere from the points of his ears to the tips of his toes. Yuta gets him fired up in all the best ways.

Two tentacles slide between them to pull off Mark’s underwear, and then that’s it. All obstructions discarded. No holes barred—literally. Just two people in a bed, pressed together and sticky and unbelievably turned on.

Well, two people and a bunch of tentacles floating around them like ducks in the water. Mark breaks from Yuta’s lips to grab one, feeling its slippery texture slide smoothly against his palm, and pulls it towards him, licking at the tip. Yuta rolls his eyes, unimpressed.

“You’re asking me to get on with it, and then—”

“Shut up, I know you like this,” Mark scolds, taking the tentacle into his mouth and blinking coyly as Yuta starts fisting his cock. He goes slow, letting Mark feel every crease and callous of his fingers, until Mark’s drooling around the tentacle and feeling a little bit spaced out. Happy. Safe.

Yuta pulls the tentacle away then, and leans back in, kissing Mark back to the present. 

“You ready?” he murmurs, and Mark presses his hips up against Yuta’s hand in lieu of a response.

Yuta grins, and then he pulls all the way away, sitting back on his haunches on the bed and leaving Mark shivering in the wake of his warmth.

The tentacles swarm.

They wrap around Mark’s waist and coil around his arms, slink along the taut stretch of his hamstrings and find their home tight on his thighs. Mark moans to feel their cool sleekness against his flushed skin. 

Yuta uses the grip they provide to maneuver Mark into an unsavory position—cheek pressed into the bedsheets, arms crossed at the wrist behind his back, ass high in the air—with little fanfare, not so much as a grunt of exertion, and a fearsome chill races up Mark’s spine as he recognizes the true extent of his lack of control.

In this position, it’s like Yuta _owns_ him. Like he could do anything he wanted and come out better than before and leave Mark a moaning, wanton mess against the mattress. Like it would mean nothing to him—like it would be _easy_. Mark shifts his hips, feels a self-conscious prickle in his tummy. 

“Yuta,” he whimpers, muffled by the sheets, and Yuta’s there in a second, hovering over him, hips warm where they’re flush to Mark’s own. Mark recognizes the four distinct dips in the mattress that signify the freedom of Yuta’s human limbs and shivers.

“I’m here, Love.”

The pet name makes Mark blush, and loosens some of the nervous energy from his shoulders. He lets out a deep sigh, and Yuta rubs his nose along the nape of his neck. 

“Tickles,” Mark manages a laugh, and shies away from the teasing touch. Yuta lands a kiss on the top knob of his spine and pulls back.

“I’m right here. Not going anywhere. I’ll take care of you,” Yuta promises, and Mark believes him, knows Yuta wouldn’t lie to him in this state, and lets himself give in.

He bites his lip, tenses the muscles in his hips, and says “M’kay. I’m good.”

The instant press of a cold tentacle to his perineum is unexpected. He gasps in time with Yuta’s chuckle. “Yeah, you are good, Markie.”

The gentle tip dances itself up to Mark’s rim, circling with minimal pressure and making him whine. It’s slick, and it coats his asshole in chilly liquid quickly, making him twist and shiver. 

“So good for me.” When the first few inches slip in, Mark lets out a gentle sigh. It’s thin, slow, and feels almost exactly like a finger would, just gently stretching him out to make room for all the rest. It feels _good,_ though, better than any human finger could. It’s impossibly smooth, mirroring the velvety feeling of his own walls, and seems to fill up every inch of him like it was made to fit snug in his ass, leaving no room for air, expanding with him as he relaxes into its cool touch.

Fuck ‘good,’ it feels _delicious._ It feels like _home,_ but in a weird, perverted, hentai sort of way: like having a full belly and clean sheets to slip under and a nice, thick cock to fit between your legs when your head is on the pillow and you turn out the lights. 

“You good, you like that?” The tentacle holding Mark’s wrists behind his back tighten for a split second, rousing him back to reality. 

“Yeah,” Mark chokes out, throat catching on a moan as another thin peach tendril presses soft against his rim. He can _feel_ the one inside him retract from where it's thickened to fill him to perfection, feels it grow slimmer to accommodate its twin.

The second one slips inside without any warning, and Mark strains against the grip around his wrists with a moan. 

Yuta has the audacity to laugh. 

“Oh, Markie,” he murmurs, and Mark can hear his pointy grin. “You look so pretty like this. Peach is good on you.”

Mark’s cheeks flush impossibly hotter. The tentacles in his ass scissor him open. Mark wonders what it would feel like to have three, five, _ten_ of them inside him and lets out a stifled little whine.

“Fuck,” he hears, just a gentle exhale, followed by the rustling of the sheets. 

Mark cranes his neck and looks back behind himself, watching as Yuta trails his hand down his chest and runs a single finger along the length of his cock. 

Mark’s own cock, hanging neglected and halfway soft between his legs, jumps at the sight, and before he knows it he’s speaking.

“I want you,” he gasps, and he can see Yuta’s dick twitch. “Before any of them—any more of them. I want you first.” Yuta’s head tilts in interest. Mark blinks coquettishly, knowing what a pretty picture he must paint in this position. “Want your cock,” he clarifies. 

There’s a sudden, overwhelming, thick gush of warm liquid inside him, slicking him up even more for the appendages probing out every inch of his insides. Mark’s coy composure crumbles in an instant, wiped away in disgust.

“Dude, did your tentacles just come in me?”

Yuta laughs again, that barbwire-wrapped-in-silk bark of sound that washes over Mark like a wet dream and leaves him bare and shivering, scraped to hell and back, as it fades away. A free tentacle drapes itself across Mark’s ass, rubbing little shapes into one of his cheeks like an apology, and Mark’s disgust lessens slightly. Whatever it is, the slide of the twin tendrils in his ass is made easier by the additional lube, and he feels like melting into the bedsheets and letting Yuta lick up every last drop of the puddle he’ll make. 

“I’m excited, Mark,” Yuta says out of nowhere, just as Mark’s eyelids start to drift closed. He snaps them open in an instant, raising a questioning eyebrow in Yuta’s grinning direction. 

“To fuck you, dude. I’m excited to fuck you,” and Mark swallows hard against the urge to cant his hips back against Yuta’s tentacles, not wanting to seem _too_ desperate. “Doing all this other stuff with you has been fun, but like, you’ve got a great fucking ass.” Through all of this, this sweet little speech, he’s jerking off to the sight of Mark absolutely debauched on his bed.

Mark rolls his eyes even as his cheeks flush a bright pink. “Thanks, I think?’

“You’re welcome.” Yuta smiles, and then two tentacles create what feel like suctions against each of Mark’s cheeks, spreading him wider. Mark lets out a gasp that quickly turns into a moan as the tentacles scissoring him open pull out in a snap, leaving him gaping. He feels his muscles work to push out the excess liquid from his hole, feels it drip down his perineum and pool under his balls.

Yuta’s sitting back, relaxed as can be, eyes fixed on Mark’s flushed expression. He shifts then, lets go of his cock for it to spring up against the toned lines of his stomach, bobbing as his hips buck up once before going still.

He stays like that for a moment, watching as Mark rakes his gaze hungrily over the tanned skin of his thighs, the greyhound-sleek muscles of his calves, before he shuffles forward and places warm hands on Mark’s hips.

“Lube?” Mark asks, a moment of forgetfulness, and Yuta just laughs, runs a finger through the liquid coating Mark’s rim, and pushes in to his second knuckle with ease. Mark gasps, spine going taut, then rolls his eyes. “Okay, point taken.”

Yuta retracts his finger, and scoots on his knees until the front of his thighs are pressed hot against the back of Mark’s own. He slips his cock between Mark’s cheeks, and it’s not where Mark really wants them, but he rolls his hips anyway, chasing whatever kind of pressure he can get. Yuta’s dick slides in the cleft of his ass, growing slicker and slicker with each thrust. His crown catches on the lip of Mark’s hole on each downstroke, and Mark drools into the pillow. 

“Yuta—please,” he gasps, and before he knows it Yuta’s gripping his cock, holding it still, and guiding it home on the next push of his hips.

 _Oh._ He presses in slowly— _too_ slowly, a languid enough pace that Mark starts whining and shifting around when he’s barely three inches in. The widest part of his cock stretches Mark’s rim wider than the tentacles prepped him, but Mark’s had enough things in his ass that he can relax through the tension and turn it pleasurable. 

He clenches desperately, hoping to pull Yuta all the way in through the sheer suction of his ass, but it’s futile. Yuta has enough self control, enough power in his hips to hold himself steady against Mark’s attempts, and he continues pressing into him at his own snail’s pace.

“ _Please,_ ” Mark repeats, and Yuta rewards him by gripping his waist and pressing down, arching Mark deeper. Mark whines, and Yuta grunts, and then he shoves it home, a swift thrust of his hips that knocks the breath from both of their throats. 

“ _Mark_ —” Yuta gasps, and Mark cries his name in return. 

The tentacles all slither away. 

Yuta drapes himself over Mark’s back, chest warm against his spine. The metal of his cross necklace is a sharp point of startling cold. His lips brush Mark’s neck with each thrust of his hips, and Mark sobs from the overwhelming, naked truth of it all. 

“I’m in you,” Yuta whispers against the shell of his ear, and it feels like more than a simple declaration that his cock is buried in Mark’s ass. It feels like a promise, like a confession, like Yuta is peering into his very soul like a dirty dirty voyeur and is absolutely captivated by what he sees. Like Mark is something fascinating to him in spite of his human simplicity. 

Mark whimpers, grinding back against him, and wishes he were in a better position to touch. He wants to touch, wants every single inch of Yuta’s skin between his lips and under his fingers and on his body. 

He thinks he’ll get that soon enough, though, so he lets the pleasure wash over him as Yuta fucks him relentlessly, one arm wrapped around his waist, the other holding himself up. Mark would be happy to be crushed under his weight—honored, really—but he appreciates the leniency. 

“God, Mark,” Yuta groans, all raspy and sexy, and Mark moans into the pillowcase. Every one of Yuta’s hot exhales fans hot across his neck, waking goosebumps under his skin. “You’re so fucking tight—so good for me,” and Mark could cry.

“You—you feel so good,” he chokes out, and the tentacles reappear, wrapping themselves tight around Mark’s ankles, slinking silkily up his sides to brush against the delicate skin under his armpits. One of them settles itself around Mark’s shoulders and chest, pinning his upper arms to his sides, and then Yuta’s warmth vanishes from his back and that tentacle is _pulling_ , lifting his face from the pillow and dragging his torso up. His back arches further, and Yuta’s cock presses impossibly deeper inside him.

“Fuck,” Yuta grunts, and he reaches a hand to tug on Mark’s hair. Mark’s front half is suspended off the bed, held up by the peach-colored appendage draping across his pecs, and he shudders all down his spine at the weightless feeling—at the _strength_ of this _thing_ holding him up. Another one wraps around his ribs to ease the pressure, and Mark relaxes into its refreshingly cold touch.

“Yuta,” he sobs, and Yuta’s hand trails from his hair down his neck, along the sinuous curve of his spine, scratching four twinning lines deep into his skin and making him whimper. 

“Is this okay?”

“Yes, god yes,” Mark moans, and Yuta fucks into him harder, faster. Mark’s hands clench and release around empty air until two tentacles slip between his fingers and he can squeeze them instead, like stress balls. He laughs, an aborted little thing that quickly turns into a choking whine as Yuta bruises up against his prostate. “ _Fuck—_ ”

“You’re so tight for me, Markie, feel so good,” 

Mark clenches, pulling around Yuta’s cock, and Yuta grunts. Two little arms branch out from the tentacle holding Mark’s chest in the air, and they reach down to flick across his nipples, delicious friction. Mark shifts as best he can on his knees, jostling Yuta’s grip on his hips, and Mark is suddenly overwhelmed by the need to watch as Yuta fucks him.

“Wanna—wanna see you,” he gasps, and the two little extensions teasing his nipples _squeeze_.

Yuta pulls out, flips him over with his tentacles, and fucks back in in one smooth motion without a word. Mark gasps in surprise at the sudden manhandling, but is reduced quickly back to a whimpering mess as Yuta hammers against him at this new angle. 

Yuta is beautiful, hair plastered along the edges of his sweaty face, lips parted in heavenly pleasure. His chest is flushed pretty pink, and Mark stretches to press his palms against the hot skin of his chest, feeling Yuta’s muscles tense under his hands with every thrust. Yuta is beautiful and Mark feels an ache in his chest that he can’t describe with his coherency being so absolutely destroyed by the ache of Yuta’s cock within him.

The tentacles wrapped around his thighs pull until he’s spread open wider, dignity thrown out the window. Yuta reaches to grab under Mark’s knee and pull one thigh up to his shoulder. Mark sobs at the intensity of the stretch, the incessant drive of Yuta’s cock deep inside him, the uncontrollable tightness of his own hole in this position. He can feel it all—every single inch of Yuta as he fucks in and out and in and out. He’s going slower again, languid rolls of his hips that punch the breath from Mark’s throat.

“I’ve wanted this for so long, Mark,” Yuta pants. He sounds turned on but coherent, and Mark squeezes his eyes shut at the unfairness of it. He wants to break Yuta’s composure—just a _tiny_ little crack would be enough recompense for how absolutely wrecked he is himself.

He reaches up, fists Yuta’s hair, and pulls until Yuta’s neck is bared, then surges forward and clamps his lips right under Yuta’s jaw, sucking a bruise that’ll last a week. Yuta shudders above him as he sucks, fingers bruising just as wickedly into the flesh around Mark’s ribs.

“Here,” Mark pants as he pulls away, grabbing Yuta’s wrist and guiding him to press a fist into Mark’s stomach. He likes it like that, likes the pressure to come from both inside and outside. Yuta gives him a skeptical look, but Mark pushes his hand down and groans as his body convulses, and that’s all Yuta needs to continue on his own. He seems fascinated, watching the depression his fist creates among Mark’s muscles as he moves it around to different areas. Mark clenches around his cock with each delicious push.

“Can you—” Mark gasps, still with one hand tangled in Yuta’s hair. “Can I—can you fuck me with them, now?”

Yuta groans, shuddering all down his spine, and Mark blinks up at him with wide eyes, reaching for a nearby tentacle and pulling it to his mouth. He runs his tongue along the length of it, lips wide open, tongue flat, until Yuta pushes down on his stomach particularly hard and then sits back, pulling out in a swift motion.

“You’re— _fuck_ , you’re so…” Yuta trails off, gaze fixed between Mark legs as Mark’s hole flutters at the sudden vacancy. Self-conscious heat dusts Mark’s cheeks, quickly replaced by surprise and pleasure as he gasps when a tentacle traces the loose circle of his rim. He’s gaping, he knows he is, and he knows it’s only going to get worse after Yuta fucks him open with his tentacles.

“Now, please— _God_ —please oppa,” Mark groans, wiggling his hips and tangling his fingers in the sheets. The tentacle on his tongue pulls away, trailing along the cupid’s bow of his lips then accordion-ing little suckers down the length of his neck. Mark whimpers at the suction, shivers when the tip of the tentacle fiddles with the small ball earring punched through his piercing. 

“So demanding,” Yuta chastises, and Mark is about to call him ‘oppa’ again, just for fun, but then a slick, cool snake is spearing into him and he loses control of all his greater faculties. 

“Hngggggggg…” he mumbles, eyes squeezing shut, and Yuta laughs.

“You like that?” he asks, and the tentacle curls deep inside Mark, crooking up against his prostate with its unforgiving blunt tip, and Mark comes without warning.

“Oh fuck!” Cum shoots all over his stomach, dick jumping untamed on his abdomen, and Mark’s toes curl in pleasure. The pressure against his sweet spot doesn’t let up—Yuta just keeps hooking the tentacle in his ass, dragging it slow and hard against the rough patch of nerves, and Mark’s entire body vibrates. “Yuta!” he cries, and Yuta bends over him again, kissing at his chest and licking away the stripes of cum painting his skin. Mark’s eyes fly open at the first ghosting of breath across his hot torso.

He’s not embarrassed, even though a little bit of him wants Yuta to make fun of how quickly he came. He has that pulsing feeling at the base of his cock, the one he gets hit with full-force right at the peak and that backs off but remains insistent in the aftermath, and the tentacle just keeps working inside him.

He doesn’t think it’s going to be that difficult for Yuta to get him worked up again, and as Yuta fits his lips around Mark’s nipple and sucks, teeth grazing the sensitive skin, his hips jump and he knows he’s correct. 

It feels so good. It all feels so _good_ , and Yuta is powerful and awash in the late evening glow shining through the open window, and Mark grinds his hips up to feel the way Yuta’s erection rubs hot against his own softening cock. 

“You’re so hot. That was so hot, Mark,” Yuta grunts against his chest, and Mark grips at the back of his head and tugs on his hair, making him gasp. Mark feels like he’s on fire inside and out, so sensitive, and the way Yuta’s hair feels so soft between his fingers isn’t helping.

“What does it— _gah!_ —what does it feel like?” Mark asks, jerking around as the tip of the tentacle makes a little sucker and pulls against his walls deep inside him. “ _Fuck,_ Yuta, _fuck_ what does it feel like?”

“You’re an absolute wreck,” Yuta laughs, and Mark shoots him a glare that’s substantially incapacitated by the way his eyes cross when an extra centimeter of girth ripples down the tentacle’s length and it expands within him. It’s a _weird_ feeling, but insanely fucking hot, and Mark grinds down against the extra pressure.

“Shut up—this is _so weird_ and good and— _fuck,_ ” Mark gasps, then shakes his head to focus. “Is it, like, can you f—feel anything?”

Yuta hums, contemplative, and then he’s pulling away and pushing Mark’s leg up and to the side, bent at the knee, to the limit of Mark’s flexibility. Mark looks on in confusion for a moment, twitching as the tentacle expands even more in his hole. Realization washes over him when Yuta shifts up onto his knees and angles his hips, spitting down onto his dick. 

“Oh my god,” Mark chides, half disgusted, half _insanely_ turned on, and Yuta just shoots him a wink, grabs hold of either side of Mark’s knee, and slides his cock into the crease where his calf and thigh are pressed together—

And yep, yeah, Mark’s cock twitches in renewed interest. It hurts a little bit, overly sensitive, but he likes the rush of arousal, searing like lava in his gut. He feels _alive,_ and the tip of Yuta’s cock pokes out of the crack every time he pushes his hips forward. It kind of feels weird—tickles, almost—but it’s really hot. It’s really fucking hot.

“Feels good, yeah,” Yuta huffs, and every slap of his hips against Mark’s bent leg is sinful. “Feels like—” he’s cut off by a moan. “Feels like, not as good as this,” he gestures vaguely towards where the crease of Mark’s leg is tight around his dick, “but the same kind of pl-pleasure.” He stutters, and Mark adores it. The press of his cock against the taut tendon behind Mark’s knee is a strange sort of hedonism that sends a thrumming thrill through Mark’s fried nerves up to his cock with every incessant punch of friction. 

“Oh my god. Oh my _god_ ,” Mark repeats, a broken record, and he reaches his hand up to press it against Yuta’s abs and feel the way they clench with each thrust. The ball piercing is cool to the touch, a delicious contrast to the burning heat of Yuta’s skin under his palm. Yuta moans and throws his head back to make faces at the ceiling, but Mark isn’t having it.

“Look at me. Look at me, please Yuta,” he begs, and Yuta complies, fixing him with a hungry gaze that could give the orange sun a run for its money. His brown eyes glint with golden sparks in the effervescent evening light, and Mark thinks he’s beautiful.

“This is crazy,” he says, voice cracking on a high breath, and the tentacle expands another two centimeters in diameter. Mark can’t stop the moan that rips itself from his throat, and his whole body tenses up and then goes completely limp. Another tentacle presses up against the length of his half-hard cock and starts _vibrating,_ and Mark starts to let out these little wheezes on each exhale, chest rising and falling more rapidly than he thought was humanly possible. 

“Yuta Yuta Yuta Yuta,” he whimpers, and his nails bite into Yuta’s stomach. Yuta groans in response.

“Mark, you’re so hot, so good for me, feel so good,” and he’s still fucking the gap between Mark’s thigh and calf, pressing the two halves of his leg together with strong hands. Mark wonders what those hands would feel like squeezing on either side of his ribs and he lets out a short little laugh of desire.

The tentacle grows wider.

One look down between them has Mark groaning, whining, shifting around and fucking himself impossibly deeper on the tentacle in his ass. He can _see_ it in his belly, see the outline of the _thing_ inside him stretching him out. 

“Yuta,” he gasps, “oppa, Yuta look.” Yuta follows his gaze, eyes glinting when he sees the taut stretch of Mark’s stomach, the bulge pressing his abdomen up. In the next instant, there’s a slick grip around Mark’s wrist, wrenching his hand away from Yuta’s stomach and pressing his palm to the bump.

Mark feels it through his hand when Yuta starts fucking the tentacle faster into him, feels the little vibrations Yuta shoots down the tendril to add to the pleasure, and whines like a fucking baby. “Holy fuck, Yuta, fuck that’s so hot.” He closes his eyes against the intensity of it, against the soft, nearly liquid feel of the tentacle stretching his walls and the smooth tightness of his own stomach bulging around the intrusion. His muscles ache a little bit—it’s so _big_.

“It’s so big,” he gasps, and Yuta stills his hips.

“‘S okay?” he checks in, words slurring over a lazy tongue that Mark really wants to suck into his mouth. 

“Yeah,” he breathes. “Yeah,” and he makes grabby hands in Yuta direction. Yuta slips his fingers between Mark’s and moves so he’s hovering, poised above him once again. He pins Mark’s hands to the mattress on either side of his head and bends to kiss Mark’s neck, and the tentacle in Mark’s ass squirts a little. Excess slick drips from Mark’s hole, and the sounds coming from down there are absolutely _filthy_ , wet clicking from the sloppy mess. 

“God,” Mark chokes out, and Yuta hits his collarbone between his teeth and _bites,_ and Mark arches underneath him. Their chests press together, and Yuta is like a coal against him, radiating warmth. A spark. A catalyst. 

Yuta wiggles until their cocks rub up against one another, and Mark jerks like his whole body’s been set on fire. The tentacle inside him starts moving slower, languid in-and-out strokes that drag too slow along his walls and makes him whine. 

“You’re so pretty, Markie,” Yuta groans into the crook of his shoulder, grinding against him, and Mark really feels like he’s going to explode. There’s so much pressure inside and out, and he wrenches his wrist free to tug on Yuta’s hair until he can kiss him, all teeth and tongue and zero finesse, and Yuta is just as fervent. His fingers dance along Mark’s arm, trail gently over his shoulder, and then wrap around his neck. 

Mark blushes at the sound that jumps from his lips straight into Yuta’s own. Yuta isn’t even squeezing, just has his hand resting around the curve of his throat, but the anticipation has Mark’s heart thumping hard against his ribcage. 

“Yeah,” he gasps, and bares his neck against the soft skin of Yuta’s palm. Yuta takes the hint and licks across Mark’s teeth when he applies the first pressure, and Mark ruts up against his cock in gratitude. It’s a dry slide down there—made even drier in comparison to the sheer _wetness_ of his ass as the tentacle continues to fuck him slower than he wants, than he _needs_. 

“C’mon, man,” he says, and rolls his hips down to meet the tentacle’s thrusts. Yuta’s fingers on either side of his esophagus seem to tighten when he speaks, and he swallows against the pressure. So much pressure. So much _pleasure_ , God, Mark thinks he’s going a little bit insane. There are tentacles all around them, hovering like some horny, alien forcefield, and his nails dig into Yuta’s back.

“C’mon,” he repeats, just a breath as he feels his face start to turn red. Yuta’s kissing him like he can’t get enough, and grinding against him like it’s just what he needs, and Mark wants more. “Faster, oppa, please.”

Immediately, the tentacle punches into him so hard that every single muscle in Mark’s body tightens up and he whimpers. It rockets in and out at _just_ the right speed, bruising into his prostate with each thrust, and Yuta’s cock slides dry against him, the head nudging up under Mark’s crown, and Yuta’s fingers loosen just a little bit around his throat, and Mark comes for the second time that night.

His fingers scrabble weakly at Yuta’s shoulders, nails biting into smooth skin, and Yuta kisses his neck when he throws his head back, chest arching up. He holds his breath through it, hips stuttering as his cock weeps gently between them, and lets out a shuddering, shaky exhale as the pleasure starts seeping from his bones. It resonates within him, reverberating through his aching muscles in time with the relentless beat of the tentacle inside him, still fucking him open—slowing down dramatically now that Mark’s hit his peak, but not stopping. Just a gentle rocking inside him, like a boat on the waves. Mark whimpers.

“Gorgeous,” Yuta murmurs, and Mark blushes under the sudden weight of this post-orgasmic attention. Yuta brushes hair out of Mark’s eyes, runs that golden gaze over every inch of Mark’s flushed face. He is gentle, and delicious, and the friction of their cocks doesn’t let up one bit. Yuta’s still hard against him, grinding slow against Mark’s sensitivity, and every roll of his hips coaxes a whimper from Mark’s gravelly throat.

A tentacle trails through the sticky cum on Mark’s stomach, and its touch surprises a gasp from Mark. Then, the tentacle rises, presses itself to Yuta’s lips, and Yuta sucks it in, eyes closing. Mark watches, open-mouthed, as Yuta licks Mark’s cum from the dripping tip, tongue swirling, and then his hips jerk once, twice, rough against Mark’s spent cock, and he’s coming with a shaky groan of Mark’s name. 

The tentacle pulls out suddenly, leaving Mark gaping around nothing and dripping with each clench of his muscles around humid air. He grimaces at the ache even as he moans, instantly missing the feeling of being stretched so completely. He wraps his arms around Yuta’s shoulders, squeezing their bodies tight together as Yuta works through his orgasm. Cum spills out over Mark’s stomach in steady pulses, and he wrinkles his nose at the mess they’ve made of his bed. 

Finally, finally, Yuta raises his head, blinking at Mark with an open mouth. 

“Woah,” he murmurs, and Mark grins. Yuta kisses him, gentle, wet, and the light around them begins to fade as the sun finally sinks below the horizon. 

“Is that enough for you?” Yuta pulls away and gasps, arm thrown across Mark’s chest. His breath is hot against Mark’s neck, and Mark feels cum drying sticky on his stomach. He shifts a little bit, craving a shower but not wanting to break the circle of their intimacy just yet. Just a few minutes more.

“Enough what?”

Yuta repositions, planting his hand on the other side of Mark’s chest so he’s propped up above him, looking down, a hawk surveying his prey. Mark doesn’t feel scared, though—and, in fact, Yuta’s eyes look a little nervous. Mark drapes his hand around Yuta’s shoulders, scratching gentle fingers through the short hairs at the nape of his neck, and tries to convey the sheer depths of his gratefulness and happiness and pleasure all at once in his gaze.

Yuta seems to relax a little bit, but the nerves are still apparent in his quirked lips. “Enough to, y’know, be your boyfriend.”

Mark presses his lips together into a thin line, hand stilling, and Yuta bites at his bottom lip, scrunching his nose. 

“What?” Yuta asks. “Was that too forward, or…?”

Mark can’t help it. He laughs. He laughs, and laughs, and doesn’t stop laughing until there are tears leaking from the corners of his eyes. Yuta jerks away from him, sitting up straight and watching his outburst with confused, slightly manic eyes.

“Yuta,” Mark gasps, wiping the tears away. “Yuta,” he repeats, softer, when he realizes that Yuta’s looking so concerned. He reaches for him again, pulls him close, and is happy when Yuta moves willingly under his hand, pliant, eager to kiss him even after his crazed laughter. 

“If you thought,” Mark says between kisses, “that,” a kiss to Yuta’s nose, “fucking me,” one on his forehead, “was what I needed to feel for you like that…” one on each of his eyelids. He’s grinning now, and his hands are warm around Mark’s waist, and Mark is happy. He feels kind of liquidy, melted under Yuta’s heat.

“Well, you haven’t exactly given me a lot to work with,” Yuta chastises, but his words are softened by the grin on his lips. 

“Honestly it did kind of help me figure things out,” Mark says, momentarily ponderous, but Yuta looks at him with confusion written plainly across his face and Mark laughs, ignoring semantics. “Yes, dude,” Mark squeezes Yuta tight between his arms, revelling in the little ‘oof’ he lets out. Mark’s chest feels really warm. His heart is thumping something frantic, and he’s more sure than he thought was possible that this is what he wants. _Finally,_ Ten’s voice chides in the back of his mind. “Yeah. I would like to be your boyfriend please.” 

Yuta kisses him harder than Mark has ever been kissed in his life. “Cool. Can I suck your dick?”

Mark groans and throws his hand over his eyes in exasperation even as his heart warms. “I just came, like, twice already, dude. You may be good but you’re not _that_ good.”

Yuta grins, cheeky. He’s already sliding down Mark’s body. A tentacle tweaks Mark’s nipple like an old friend. “Wanna bet?”

♦♦♦

“Maybe I should send Ten a gift basket or something,” Mark muses one afternoon, lying on Yuta’s chest. There’s a tentacle coiled soft across his thigh, and Yuta’s pretty fingers are playing with his hair. Every rise and fall of his chest reminds Mark that he is here, and he is human, and he is _his._

“I really don’t think that’s necessary, babe.” Yuta sounds amused, but Mark is sincere. He twists, propping himself up to look Yuta in the eye.

“I’m serious, though. Without him I wouldn’t ever have done anything. I wouldn’t have you.”

Yuta looks at him like he’s the moon in a pitch black sky. “You, Mark Lee—” he shakes his head. “What did I ever do to deserve you.”

Mark laughs, and the tentacle on his leg loops around his thigh just above his knee. Mark runs a steady hand through the hair falling soft across Yuta’s face, pushing it back so he can see more of that endless, glittering gaze, and presses a kiss to Yuta’s sweet lips. 

“I can think of a few things off the top of my head: you’re hot; you’re, like, 90% human; and you make me smile.”

Yuta grins at him, and his hand rests warm on Mark’s hip. “Low standards, Mark. Low standards.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whew. we're finished. deep breaths everyone. im abt to dump some thoughts.
> 
> yumark are very easy. not just in terms of writing, but also in terms of how they act around each other irl (on camera blah blah i know we dont know everything just let me have this), and that comfortable relationship they have is really something i wanted to drive home with this second chapter (that and ten being the best best friend ever, obviously). mark is awkward and uncertain sometimes but yuta is like his pillar. mark returns that strength whenever he can. they are best friends (ten notwithstanding) and i very much like the idea of them being patient and happy to wait for each other to feel comfy taking whatever next step is on the plate. idk. rambling a little bit here i just really love yumark a lot. really good boys. tentacle yuta is so much fun i adore him. mark is just a nerd and i adore him too. ugh. im gonna miss these boys. this universe has been really fun to explore and i actually have a few more tricks up my sleeve for these two (and some special guests :) ) coming your way this year! 
> 
> anyway, thank you so much for reading. feel free to ask any questions or say literally anything in the comments—they really do bring me so much joy!! love u all.
> 
> [twt](https://twitter.com/divinerenjun) | [cc](https://curiouscat.qa/divinerenjun)


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